I Am Rage {Superhero, Action, Tragedy}

Chapter 5: That Loops On And On


"Despair is something not harsh enough to fully paint this picture to the gravity it requires. The herald of your extinction, the menace that had done nothing but seek your end, the beast of your own making had followed you despite your drastic measures. Despite everything you'd done to get this far. The lives wasted, the risks gambled with, the elation of survival collapsing in on itself. Nothing could really compare to this feeling, the nearness and certainty of a death you'd struggled and strived to escape. Least of all as that feeling was multiplied hundreds of thousands of times over as each of the Garkah were now irreparably linked in collective emotional minutia. The fear alone would have killed thousands if they still had anatomy susceptible. But what truly destroyed all semblance of positive emotion, was the instant revelation that their wanton destroyer, their ultimate Threat… was just a kid pushed too far."

And that his arrival had rent their plans in twain. The Ark was raked with overload. The power siphoned from countless Garkah twisted and reformed into wrathful permanence and singular cannibalistic purpose. There was nothing that could stop it as it was separated from Threat like metal from ore. The slag running roughshod through the storage constructs in the Ark, overflowing and spilling out in all directions. Once interconnected systems became melted hollows of what they once were. A mold being broken as its last casting completed its cooling. But not all was destroyed. Rather, infected.

All that energy, those tacit shredded souls, the lives of millions rent and roiling. All were released from that event horizon and splattered throughout the systems it crashed through. Being molded by former being and dying emotions, memories both former and latter. Given a modicum of form and function to prevent rejection like all that was taken prior, so it could be returned. The same process with all the other Garkahs' stored power. But what flooded it now was cancerous and corruptive. Systems it did not destroy were crammed full to bursting. Disjointed beings of energy held in emotive form they could not understand. Power have processed inadvertently seeded with sentience it could not hold. Given no nurturing environ to grow in other than the nebulous hell of a post big bang. So it festered, stagnated in all the systems of the Ark save for its core. The only part protected from the overload, and the only part that could cut itself off from what now surrounded it.

The Garkah were crushed under the weight of hubris and refutation, but they were not dead in that instant of ultimate despair. So they retaliated as could only be expected of a cornered animal. Threat, barely cognizant of what he was, barely conscious of his freedom, was walled in a barrier of sheer will. An energetic construct separating him from all there was. It could do little for the image they all saw and felt, but it was a dam against the truth. Against that which tore at what stability they needed at the moment. A stability they would have to cling to for a long time, as their Ark began its launch sequence.

The sphere was dropped from its plinth to the rail it would ride to the stars. A wondrous if not ominous sight no doubt, to those left behind. Half the city in flames as a storm of electricity gathered around the last precipice left unburnt. A massive splitting of the atmosphere as it fired, bellowing the flames higher as everything was kicked with almighty back blast. The sky would have been given yet another new star to follow for the briefest of moments before it broke away from its overbearing mother. One last aurora of excess energy trailing off it like a rainbow hued comet. But all its symbolism would be tainted and reversed. A cause for celebration for those left behind, and a cause for despondency for those in its path.

A path none inside could see or dictate, automated systems that survived guiding it to wherever it saw fit. Toward a world it could at least say held those most compatible to its carried host. A host that had plenty of time to reconcile with their situation. With their humility, and with their Threat.

"Like I said before, I don't know how long it took them to get to Earth, but it was long enough for those walls to come down eventually. Long enough for the Garkah to realize the extent of what they had caused. Speaker, m-my Speaker, had been the first to force that wall up between his people and Threat. But also the first to relinquish it when it had outlived the untimely shock.

"I wish I knew what all happened after, but I can tell you it probably took years to get through. I've felt what it's like to be part of them plenty of them, holding back emotions was a fool's errand. And their grievances were thrown back in their faces as they tried to level them at a kid with little memory of what had occurred. Who only had flashes of what all sparked this pain. So, Threat had to reconcile with himself just as much as they did. With all that he had done to his people.

"It's hard to hold on to hate when you feel everything they are. So all that they were left with was time to reconcile. And heal."

As well as plenty of time to work on fixing their Ark as best they could. A few surviving connections to the outer systems gave them at least some warning as to what they had fully suffered, just not a whole nor clear picture. They worked to clean out as much of the corruptive energy as they could, worked to mend melted over connectors and hubs. But the power was difficult to work with, and harder to work against. And their new bodies, while easily able to manipulate their own energies, were as infinitesimal as the source of their powers. And the hubs built into the Ark were too large to fix meaningfully. So, when they approached their final destination, they were unprepared and unable to stop what would ultimately be their greatest shame.

"The rest you'll probably know, but the context certainly helps color all of it better… To a degree. When the Ark fell on my town I was asleep, almost a completely different person to what I am now. Not just because of the obvious, but because… I was… never wholly there. For the longest time I couldn't remember things well. Anything I had no strong emotional attachment to was just noise. The wall paper in my room, to people on the street, the lessons at school. The friends I made the day before. Anything other than what I liked or didn't like, was just a blur to me. I couldn't even remember my parent's faces."

"I… fuck... I could remember everything about what Tlatoani had done that week. All the bad guys he'd fought or people he'd saved. Anything they showed on TV at least. I could remember my favorite clothes and how comfy they felt, the taste of my favorite foods… and the ones I hated. ...Heh. My dad used to… to… hrmm never mind. My parents helped me with most of the things I'd forget. They had the neighborhood give me candy and tell me their names so I could associate them. They taught me about the world by showing me heroes from all across it. That's how I became a fan of Tlatoani, and I guess a super fan in general."

"All the while... I could barely even make them out. I've thought a little bit about why that all was. I think... maybe I knew... but every time I tried after they would come up as nothing. I still saw them as my parents, but maybe they were too familiar. I don't know... But... but I never forget the red scarf my mother used to wear. The warmth it still had when she gave it to me on cold days, the way it trailed behind her when we went anywhere… The way it billowed when the Ark finally found us."

The overcharged systems, bearing that corruptive energy, worked without fail once the Ark touched down. The scanner, meant to find suitable hosts for the Garkah still buried inside, fired off as the first of the town's people approached the alien hunk of metal that had landed in their street. But with that scanning pulse came the overflowing contents, and the malformed beings that were formed from its stagnant ocean.

Every person hit was slammed full of what amounted to sentient energy, ripping through and changing them to what that energy saw as its form… Threat's form. And with it came that same overpowering darkness that had locked him away from himself. The last emotions of a few of the town's people were strong enough to be imprinted onto these mutated beings, on those malformed things that overwrote them. And they knew nothing but what that power gave them… and a hunger beyond satisfaction.

"I watched my entire neighborhood get stuck down before my eyes. I watched my dad and mom get hit and disappear forever into overly bright light. That… was the last time I could even remember what they looked like. The desperate look of my dad running to shield us from what was outpacing him. The tears in my mom's eyes as she tried to reach me before... before everything fell away. Before I was hit like all the rest. Sunk away from myself, from what little I had. But somehow I was also the last. A twist of fate or random chance with the arcing of the pulse. I don't know. But I ended up being the last one to be stuck, and therefore the one most compatible within range of the Ark. So it decide to give me everything it had.

"It shot its core sliver deep into my head, along with all the power it still had stored up. Every single Garkah onboard was shunted into there and plopped down on a single brain cell. Along with all of their respective power in addition to what was left of Threat's excesses. It also slammed me into a broom closet and knocked me unconscious, so it's not like it was a calm experience. But… it spared me the fate of watching my family turn into laceroids. And probably eat me. As if that was a conciliation for everything else that happened.

"The Garkah in my head worked almost immediately to sequester and hold back the energy that had gotten in, basically damming up my emotions so I couldn't accidently trigger it or get subsumed by it. But Threat wasn't as frightened by the possibilities. He woke me up, helped me rationalize that I had people living in my head, who were also borrowing part of my brain so they could learn to understand me. That's why I was mute when I came to you, lots of time without a voice and little need to speak out loud. He also basically awakened the powers that I had been given by this whole process. I ended up turning that closet into a pincushion. But… he couldn't do much to hold back what else it had done. While it was fiddling with my biology, the process that hit me fixed whatever was wrong with my head. So unfortunately I could remember what had happened right in front of me.

"My parents, my neighbors, everyone that I tangentially knew were gone. I still feel the fires turning the horizon black and red, the ash starting to burn by lungs, and the empty space in my head where I should have been crying for what happened. And you want to know what made all of it worse. That was my birthday. 11 years old and given the worst birthday gift a boy could ask for. That realization didn't go over well with little old broken me either. I nearly burned down half my neighborhood killing the entire town's electrical grid. I also broke that dam wide open… And I guess half my problems stem from that day. The other half came later. Though... ugh... not too much later.

"After that, I spent about six weeks living in a mattress store on the edge of town. Scrounging supplies and listening to Speaker teach me how to use my new powers. The Garkah were good to me. Scared at first of what I would think, but I could feel everything they felt. Like I was one of them, just with a physical body. After those six weeks I decided to try and branch out, to try and head to Brighton for more supplies or help. On the road I passed what my town had done to anyone in their path. The split open cars, the destroyed buildings… the blood stains. When I finally got into the town I happened to find a survivor and… I guess his wife maybe. I never learned who they were. They were starving, hunkered in a basement trying to keep out of sight, and my sudden appearance threw a wrench in that.

"Before I had left Frigateville the Garkah had begun transmitting a signal that they said would ward the laceroids away. Or... what they were afraid they had caused. They were also working on a suite of sensors that, I guess, could detect them. My visit with that couple coincided with their attempt to test those sensors… and it got them killed.

"I don't really know what happened, Speaker said it was baffling the signal they were using, that the emotions given off were too strong. But it meant that, while the couple were arguing over what to do with me, that there was nothing keeping... keeping my town at bay. My voice was still spotty, I tried to get their attention to quiet them down but… But it was too late. I watched them get ripped away. I had to listen to them being eaten alive. That was the first time I'd ever blacked out. To the sounds of flesh being ripped to pieces.

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"When I came to it was quiet again. I almost didn't want to listen, didn't want to hear out anything anymore. But Speaker told me what had happened. That they had miscalculated. Eventually getting through what those things, what the laceroids were. That they were my neighbors, my friends, possibly even my parents. Something broke in me after that, the other half of the source of my troubles. I couldn't stop myself from hating them, hating everything for putting me through this. For destroying my life, even if I barely knew what was missing from it. I resented them, resented everything. And apparently that feeling was powerful enough to create something that shouldn't have ever existed.

"That sliver in my head from the Ark, the Garkah had used it as a prison of sorts for the bulk of what had slipped in to me. Not enough to prevent me from gaining a bit of Threat's abilities and… I guess a bit of his anatomy. But at least enough of the bits that would have driven me insane. Apparently this prison wasn't 'airtight' though, and emotions were able to slip in. And out of it.

"The energy inside was still difficult to call sentient, but it was close. Close enough to take in and learn from everything I experienced. Copy and reflect my life onto themselves. The largest… blob… of this was just a mass of aggression and hatred that was impossible to reshape. But, on the inside wall, hugging a crack in its cage, was an offshoot mass more than willing to take in what I gave. New feelings, new emotions. This moment on repeat.

"This… was how Resent was born.

"It wasn't much to start. I wouldn't even know about the sliver for a long time, let alone what was inside it. But this thing… this fucking mass of sentient energy… It was what tore any restraints I had left when Para threw the whole damn bus at me. It was the one staring back at you through that red eye. It was… It was what took over when… when I killed Ziyou… and Glaz… and Phazer.

"I... 'alluded' to most of the rest of what happened to me after that moment. Even if I lied a bit about it. But that was the point I chose to be a hero. I decided to keep walking after I recollected myself and turned away from that resentment inside of me. It was too late, but I still couldn't stand blaming the Garkah for what happened. Empathy is just their entire existence now. And really, they couldn't bear all of the blame for this. And neither could Threat.

"I decided, then and there, that I would try and help them. To help them atone for what happened. For the destruction and death they brought with them. But… huh…along that path I unwittingly added myself to the list of the guilty in a more direct fashion. A consequence of holding that resentment at bay, I demanded of them, made them keep the countermeasure signal on no matter what. A selfish thing that helped along the reconciliation… and only caused more pain down the line.

"The… that countermeasure… was the... signal... in the Signal Massacre. It pushed the laceroids away from me and toward The Wall. I had no way of understanding this, of knowing what it even was or what it was ultimately doing. But I held too much uncertainty to not keep it going. Until I walked into Berta, starving, tired, and with the last of the power we had used up to feed that fucking signal. But… ultimately you found me… and so did the rest of my town.

"I still see their eyes staring back at me every night. They've calmed a lot since… since I accepted being what I am. But… it's still hard to sleep most nights. I saw my mom among them that day… hrrmmm… And then saw her again when Para wheeled her out of cold storage to fight me at graduation. She was still crying, unable to stop because… because the thing that took control of her could do nothing else! All it knew was hunger and a sadness it couldn't even understand! ...I tried to free her the only way I knew how to at the time. But…but she freed herself from that eternal torment. She's the only pair of eyes I don't see in my nightmares… and the only one I was able to save.

"Y-you've already been through what comes next to just get here. I was put in an orphanage, it was fine. Nothing bad on their part. I got a job at Untied Armors maybe a bit too early. They were the only place small enough to even have a shot at trying for. Everywhere else was too corporate and sterile. By then me and the Garkah were hone my powers and thinking of building up to a suit that I could use in conjunction with them. A few parts containment and few more walking armored battery. After it was done I quit and signed up and you know all that more personally. I just… have to cover what Resent did as I tried to become a hero.

"Apparently he'd followed along with my life like a thrice reflected image transposed on a piece of clay molded into the shape of a Garkah. I don't fucking understand it all either, the thing was a fucking menace. It became fully sentient at some point, understanding and remembering everything it'd gone through to get there. It even showed me what it had been like to live in the Ark… It was hell. I'm not exaggerating, it was a literal hell! Like... like all the dissolving and ripped apart pieces of Garkah that were killed and taken in by Threat were remolded and left to work backwards from whatever was left of their existence. All the while having to contend with rouge emotions absorbing and fracturing them apart, gravitational bodies eating them like singularities, and whole new beings coming into life and dying without cohesive thought. It was fucking madness… and was probably not a very good upbringing.

"But, well, the first time I became aware of the extent of my powers, and the power that came out of that hell, it was there. Directing a flow that was coming out of their prison when I got too angry, when I resonated with the main mass inside of it. All the while learning to manipulate that power… learning to manipulate me. That first day when you stopped me… that was its first outing as well. And I had no idea."

"The second time… was a surprise for both of us. That Berta scenario, the pain from facing down even simulated laceroids, and the literal pain of getting beat to shit and gashed through the eye. It gave it the perfect opportunity… because I needed power just to survive that… and it had plenty on offer. It poured a chunk of that central blob out. Trying to show those weak approximations what a real… what a… hggrrr… Even with it out of my head it's hard to avoid thinking like it. But anyway, after that me and the Garkah knew something was wrong, not because Resent had showed its hand, but because that mass spoke.

"It was just one word but it was enough. Learning to say the only thing it understood and the only thing it cared for was probably admirable. But it speaking scared the shit out of everyone, and clued the Garkah in on what had was happening in that sliver. At least enough to know they had to take action. That we had to take action. The… heh… the day I broke the Ark was the day we took care of it. And also the first time I had ever seen the inside of my own head.

"The Garkah had built a small city on the cell they'd landed on, a little bit of simulation carried over and solidified there. That was also when I first saw them as they really were… or how they are now I guess. Simulated bodies you'd be forgiven for thinking were laceroids, but different enough to tell with certainty that they were the people I had been talking to in my head for half my life. Together we worked to remove that mass from the sliver before it reached any real form of sentience. Before it found a way to take me over on its own. It worked in the end, gave me a massive power boost and showed me what I was really made of. Showed me the threads that I'd been given and that I used for my powers. And… then I broke the Ark.

"But, somehow, the sliver slipped out of my head, and slipped into my suit. With Resent still locked up inside. And I unwittingly gave him a better prison cell. That chunk of Ark I took, I put into my suit, upgraded it so it wouldn't meltdown when I used my new full power. But that sliver was added into the mix, and Resent took my suit as his new home. He was silent through the rest of the course, even during graduation. The semi sentient chunk of energy I took in wasn't so quiet, but I still had control of that. Control enough to not snap Hothead's neck for what he did to my mother's scarf…! But control enough. At least until Para blasted me into the ground.

"I think… that was the first time me and Resent resonated, the first time I fell in on myself like Threat. The first real time I used his powers for real. I could still feel and see, I could still direct and understand what was happening. But I wasn't myself… not completely. If Erd hadn't smacked me across the arena I'd probably have killed Para then and there. But instead I think Resent was knocked out of me… but I was still left in the state we were fighting in. And in the end you know how that turned out.

"That was the second time I truly blacked out, full conscious thought out, and it left me too weak to keep Resent at bay. Even though I didn't even know it was there. It wormed its way back in, soaked my world in nitrous. But it was not the one who lit the match in the end. I'll admit to not being strong enough to walk away but… you still have to lay blame where it's due. Para got what he deserved. It… it just cost more than I could handle. And in the end Resent found its in again… and used me to kill like the monster everyone thinks I am. I won't shirk my blame. I can't. I killed them just as much as it did. But I'm not the one who enjoyed it… I'm not the one who wanted any of this.

"When you showed up… I guess my subconscious finally found its way back against Resent. You just keep on saving me, even when I never deserved it. After that, and after a long walk, it found a way back up as Buster challenged me. But that didn't end the way it thought it would. I certainly wasn't expecting to come back to this world with a sword through my chest. I certainly wasn't prepared to die like that. And apparently neither were the Garkah.

"They had tried to help, but were blocked out. So, when they finally had the chance, they used some kind of matter teleporter, it's actually still there in their city half built. But it… poofed me away I guess. It just… didn't… take them with me.

"They sacrificed themselves for me. Sent me away so that I wouldn't die for their sins. For the guilt they felt themselves. I still don't know where they are, but they left me a message that they would turn themselves in and admit to the blame they couldn't let someone else be condemned over.

"The only problem, besides the fact that they were the only thing keeping my nightmares away, was that Resent didn't die that day either. While I, admittedly, blacked out the city the first time, sorry about that by the way, it was encased in concrete and apparently festering like a cancer. It blacked out the city the second time. Trying to still manipulate me, calling me back and pretending to be the Garkah calling for help. Just a lot more aggressively than I should have accepted. Its blast caught that VTOL full of survivors I had just got fucking done freeing and… hrugh… And I couldn't just let them die. I... didn't really know I could but... I was able to save them. Copy them for lack of a better work for it. Give them threading and hold on to it as they fell out of sight.

"I went after them, saved them, put them and a few people back together. But ended up walking right up to my suit without even knowing… And couldn't stand living in the lie I was being drowned in at that moment. I want to be a hero... but not like that. I... I broke it out, put the suit back on, and slammed face first into the cost of vengeance. And opened myself up to be manipulated all over again.

"I beat Buster and her trap all by myself. I held its attempts at swaying me at bay, but the walk back to Eagleville was just all downhill. When I came back to my hideout firebombed and the only refuge left to me in ashes I was nearing terminal velocity. The Dockers crucifying the Zors just about boosted me into the lithosphere and then some. I… I lost control… but so did Resent. Like that little piece of the old Threat weren't so content and absorbed. But... at least it was me… I was the one who let myself loose. I... was the one who chose to break every bone in their bodies, and then make them whole again. Not that thing. But that didn't stop Resent from finally showing its hand in full in the aftermath.

"When I tore up the street, that was me getting dragged the last mile down to the pit it lived in. A desperate move, more of a direct attempt to sway me back to what... we... were before. Some stupid fantasized dichotomy. That… hrrrr! That Ever Again bullshit! It came too close to using my powers to tear everything around me apart, to wantonly siphoning everything it could get my hands on. It liked killing people, tearing away what made them people, memories and emotions and all the mess mental activity created. It like eating all of that, like a fucking single celled organism gobbling up anything smaller than it. But unfortunately for it, I wasn't going to be fucking used again. I returned what it took, pulled everything I had in my body away from the both of us, threw it away so neither of us could use it. Put both of us on the ground so we could both die and end this shit…! At least… that was the original... half thought plan. But you all changed that. And Speaker changed that.

"He had left me a message, one that I had accepted as his final goodbye. But it was always meant for me, written in energy on the inside of my suit. Energy… that was tired rather nicely to Resent's tail. Like the thread of a knitted sweater. A thread I pulled and unraveled him with when I shattered that corrupted suit. Sorry... again for dropping all that on you then, but it was either that or an unfulfilling death for something I wasn't fully to blame for. And the rest is just… walking home… and walking on eggshells till you arrived.

"And then you blew down my door."

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