The torrential, the rippling, the heaving, the cracking. All that has been broken and slashed. Rent to silence. A halfmoon indent burned into path, turning this pit of night to bright shining day. That gleaming brilliance too great to just fade away.

That telluric comet come to crash down, cut his course in molten metal and desiccation. To reflection against the surface of that instant moon. The glass and rot both could not withstand, a glittering wake adding more to an already sensory deprived world.

As all those overdriven minds and bodies and powers felt their time run out, felt the weight of fury refuted of impotence. Allowed to have what they wanted. But all knew this was the extent of their able revenge. This path cut all their own. And the pride in making it, in making this thing feel fear at long last. Feel real pain. Was more than enough consolation as it all came to be known, full send.

Abdominal plates, oozing out their controlling wreath. Gut beneath failing to empty as it burned in dying off afterimage. Pain receptors lighting on fire, both simulated and parasitized. A solid vertebra cleaved in two and sparking its overloaded currents between. The only connection left a spared left flank, articulating plate bending to crack and half an upper intestine broiling to sausage. A contortion, a surprise, a horror halved expression. That visage of terror no longer smiling, no longer allowed to enjoy the pain it caused! Red glow beneath denaturing like soaked clay, oozing through and down as it felt all that pain wrought for itself.

That maw hanging wide, unable to close. Inching back toward the gleam of that spiteful lineup, gathering to cast their own shadows over it. The darkness within failing as that let in light behind burned in across the face hidden away. A matching look, a horrified expression. Whether still locked in or a rude awakening, it didn't matter. Damage had been done. Damage that had stuck. A strike so deep that the void split open and let the idiot inside it know he wasn't dead just yet. Because he was going to feel this just as much as Resent was.

But they both still held…

They both still refused to take the punishments they had been due.

The armor lurched back, lurched round. Talons shuffling and stabbing a sudden path, both questionable and horrific. Both eyes alight and burning their wrath. Their rebuke. Grip stumbling, balance failing, loosed half sloshing and leveling it canted. But that open space, that airing out void, that slash through everything that could have stood forever. It oozed back open as halves gashed and twitched.

Oozed to arcing fire as that wreath tore it away. Melted layers and cauterized flesh, heaped organs baked to char and blood to jellied clots. All of it oozed back to life and back to where it should be. Arteries stabbed down, rolls roiled and reconnected, bone snapped down and hissed. All to the sizzle of hated healing. Muscle and skin and layer after layer reforming to hide away this proving scar, this mark of shame. But could not deny the victory was-

"You fucking think that's enough!!"

That maw growled, splattered and buzzed off its words like its life blood had tried to drown it.

"You think you can kill me so easily!!!"

Its teeth cracked its wrath into grit. Its glare haloing as the glow beneath spread out. And thin.

"YOU BELIEVE ME WEAK!!!"

It flickered, its stellar glare rising back, as its form locked back to tension and fury. As its once baiting meat stood ready to realign this inverted hunt from behind their landed volcanic comet. Behind that revitalized stoicism coming off his assisted return to form.

"No!"

A matching glare, burning fire meeting across obliterated braking distance, backstopped by comrades returned from a hell of his own. Turning nightmare at last into something more.

"All we needed was our pound of flesh! Our proof of defiance to show we beat you!!"

The lineup tensed, a resolve fighting back up to add strength to this too clearly overloaded bluff.

"All we needed was to leave our mark!! To make it clear we fought and won against insurmountable odds!!"

Stares gave as good as they got. Dragged that glare to them like their lives depended on it.

"Because we were never going to win this!! It was never our fight in the first place!!"

Depended on him seeing only them. See only the weakness that they were now and not the true shadow stretching over.

"Because this was always a battle meant for monsters like YOU!!! So there was only ever one person responsible for putting you down!!!

"AND THAT'S HIM!!!"

That glare flinched, all that tension spooling back, reeling like a realization just careened around the corner like a semi-truck. That helmet whipping around, to the shadow growing yet dimming away in that same fleeting instant. To the thing it had ignored this whole time. To the one this bait was all here for in the first place. The one… already repeating history all over again!

Another instantaneous destruction of distance, another wanton fury carried wide, another glaring supernova appearing in his face! And another punch to snap Para back into this world! So he can beat him half to death all over again!!

The air cracked with that forcibly dislocated maw, the light of this new blue nova falling away to the cathartically livid true visage that it had once hidden away. A reversal on all fronts but now both would feel what they had dared to ignite! Flesh inside rippling to tear, that wreathing energy squashing and failing. And all this potential transfer turning to kinetic "FUCK YOU!!!"

Dust and glass haloing to spiral, a wider arc and different direction but the same force to send this piece-of-shit-squared flying! Hurtling across its chosen battlefield like a bullet too heavy to find a target! Because it was the target, and the same following through tension cracked whatever was left to even crack open! Resent was thrown and Seth was following suit!

The armor tore a crashing rut, caught friction and drag to knock it flailing. Those red eyes glaring back open to the upside down. To decry the open sky for allowing their orbital partners to fill that storm eye and speed up the order of events. Scathe against the side of their head to spin it back up right. So he could hammer down with no fucks left to give!

Scales crunched chest plate, overpressure bashed in a smaller crater, and this new hell gel layer of liquid resentment lost a lungful it had dreamed of! The ground heaved in rebound, laid it up for the kick already twisting next into battery. That head made weight and square as the blasting cap. For the bulk round deemed shot!

More buckled plating and derailed spine, and more lateral velocity to keep this fight at a distance from those already out of it.

Those running out of range from what they could not hope to add anymore to. Undoing their own undone light brigade. Thankful looks to those thought lost and returned in force. Stern glances at the monsters fighting it out. And one stoic hang making sure this was going to end here and now.

As more distance for this cartwheeling mass of metal and moron was crashed into it. To make it realize this was what it wanted! Armored claws fought centrifugal force seeking to rip them away. Only to find raising grade. The slope of his grand creation coming in fast and loud. A catch and slash up, the air and inertia sanded apart like an out of control truck. Those eyes relocked on to the bare scaly sole already careening into them! A flying kick turned another transfer of weight, more than either could withstand. Cutting balance losing all its winnings, armored talons flash switching places with that crumpling head.

Relative management of rapid decelerations, one raking the other buried, as all that weight and more crashed to the ground hard. But the real weight relented its constant turvy, that sole stamped before it could crush its advantage. It didn't need it. Seth wanted something with more leverage.

A winding step off, reversed stature barely left to fall off its new axis before its weight became null. A single point hoisted. That offending, ill fitted tail! Claws wrapped around, hooked into the bloated spacing between plates and wrenched. Not for severance, but for a new pain to feel with another familiar to kick Para up! Shot put into the ground!!

Concussions and contusion a diversion, a distraction to start pumping Resent full of too much inertia. Armored claws scrambled but found no catch before they lost access to the ground they'd hollowed. But they wouldn't be denied for long. Round and round, tipping balance and setting angle. And a loose to meet that edge at a more justified speed!

No parabolic arc to follow and cut short, only a smashing against the steep grade that tried to keep itself together. A burst of dust and buried compact like a wave of volcanic sand. Another kicked out breath that it never earned in the first place, as it hit the rock it tore into. A growling claw back of that stolen air carrying more than just rebuke and venom.

Those eyes releveling, its twin already cutting their own rut toward them. Armor forcing itself into battery, claws already alightning to make him pay more! A wind up mirrored real and fake, closing in as more power was pressed into service than form could take. But two halve still held too much commonality!

Claws connected and reposted in thunder, edges both splinters and sickening spalling! More slashed plates and decimated servos in that bloody crush, but both far from anything but more! The other claws crashing together before either even knew. Instinct and wanton violence the order of this chaos. A crackling fusillade of shredded bone and shredded metal, damage refused in tandem causality. But only one was slow on the uptick on just what this whole shebang was for. And what it took to stay in step.

Real claws reforming to crunching ball, one last recoil denied by borrowed ionic wherewithal. This thing took from Ohm so Seth was giving it back as he would! And instinct turned to shattering punch screaming back in with all the vengeance carried aloft! And without its match to meet it at the door.

That same cheek, that same left side, that same scared eye now paired over with more substantial reality. The untuned symbol of scales on metal falling flat.

Over!

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

*TEUSH*

And over!!

*TEUSH*

AND OVER AGAIN!!!

*TUESH*

The ozone propellant searing untrained scales, and that oozing leak of manifested power splattering out of every crack and hole. The flesh beneath splintering and adding to the crimson spray. But only a single azure arc counter raking contact preternatural.

Rising to another wind up, a countering wreath of blue sparking across to meet that red. To wrench this cancer free of its host! The only reaction left for this twice deep concussed a shakily reel of its arms back in like pitiful victimhood in the face of just punishment. But the familiar movement lost in the charge to prove it false, caving the last of instinct amidst all this justice needing served. As half thought hesitation finally saw it… Capitalized on.

As that left eye reopened unlit. And the air ripped to that all too known, all too consuming tone. Para was awake! And complicit!!

The dust, the crater, force hardened ground beneath. A sphere of ripple and condensate and solid sonic force. A blast of desperation finally finding its mark. Drums split and reformed and split again. Overpressure of overdensity kicking like an oil tanker failing to come into port. Gravity and wind up tossed to the wayside. The long way away side. Parabolic trajectory dropping Seth like a sliced up carcass on a butcher block. Ringing wasn't simple enough, rupturing wasn't harsh enough. It was like that tone tore at his very being all over again.

Because it had! His threads rippled and split, their hum and resonance wholesale overwritten. Their own binding tone muted by sheer volumetric plateau. That's why this hurt, that's why it always hurt! This piece of shit was his counter and he knew it across the broadest sense of the fucking word! That or Resent really couldn't give a shit about keeping his new body to hi-

'FUCK!!!'

Both claws, both hands beneath leveled malicious. And the air already ripping apart at its seams. That oozing wreath spraying out to haloing discharge, just as that directed wave of Geneva Convention violations bashed Seth into the true meaning of agony again. A meager block splintering at every indeterminate peak transferring through. Scales and flesh and bone bunched together, splitting apart as their frameworks roiled in failing composer. Another merciful kickback to add the diminish that distance brings with it. But only offering a chance to feel everything that this collaborator could manage. That his failing master had risen him up for. The strength was beyond what Para had thrown before. Restraint was possible but just as likely was the prospect of Seth's preceding sharing being turned against him! A laceridic Para was not what he wanted to deal with right now! But it was already clear as to the latter as that maw whipped down to scream its truth.

That enclosed nebula of stellar birth and death, of plasma discharge too strong to call anything but star like. But repurposed, rippling, tearing and rending its surrounding fabric asunder. A back blast halo of crimson collateral expenditure, a wall of sound like a brick wall sent flying. All Seth could see in the moment before he couldn't avoid it any longer, was that transpacific oil tanker turned baseball bat to send him flying to the hell they both spawned from.

A fresh lateral comet, a buzzing wreath of desperate hold together, a matching blast of dust and compacted emptiness to mirror its dissipating partner. A new full distance pushed between them. The whole of this black crater their battlefield to use and abuse. And stew in the rue of their now shared need to heal. And accept the inevitable that this was a real battle to a death too far from.

Bones crackled back into place and structure. A hack cleared a seethe to reel in. And put back all the air that had boiled away. A dimmed blue glare meeting its crumpled over match at the far side. A rivalry two fold needing to be snapped back into focus as self-conscious nerves crackled back into place. And remembered the tone his punches had rang out. The resonance they'd found being held like it was his own even through the cacophony. A familiar quest, an only half expected objective, and a realization that this was even worse than that already broken and drained juggernaut. Dead and still metal doesn't have the same astronomical requirements that a living breathing being has!

'No wonder it refuses to die. The fuckers a goddamned rat's nest!'

Compounding and compounding. Energy made solid and coiling over and over. A true gravity well for energy made just by the sheer volume of thread count. And given a guiding tone utterly torrential. The Ark was easy, it was just pressing itself tight enough to turn gravity on. It was just a blanket for lack of better analogy. This thing really was a living breathing black hole. This was an amorphous existence given what should not be called structure. This was gravity trying to become a real boy! This was madness!! And…!

And needed more power than Seth was comfortable taking to untangle it all. But he knew it had to happen. He'd known this had to happen. Knew what it would cause and what it would mean. So his azure desperation shifting over, voiced itself as such to the only one prepared to meet it head on.

"Okay people, get the hell out of the crater!!! This fight's not yours anymore!!!"

Aegis bellowed hard enough to make her father proud. A demand to both newly named and veteran alike. Staring down the lot of them with too much exacerbation from this continued dereliction of already shattered promises! Because she knew full well what was coming, the image still blurry in her mind but impossible to avoid. Impossible not to understand now. Even as those feeling the left over tasters of forbidden power meandered and halfassedly heeded her warning. But withered and understood the gravity as her stare demanded louder. And her stance showed her readying for something beyond their expectations.

'Just tell me if you need som-'

'DON'T!!! Even!! Try it!'

The connection, the tether still faintly wrapped around her wrist growing stronger. Only adding to her exacerbation but too necessary. A cue to follow in this coming dance as her focus was needed in spades. A shape imagined and held to, two fold structure another necessity. As was its unforgivable extent. An unacceptable need that she was going to rise to. To show she could.

A shared focus slowly reaching, guiding motion in tandem. Dimensions, circumference, altitude. The wider world surrounding about to be coated in orange beyond all's fathoming. The rumbling echo of those already passed hits. The quiet fall of the crumbling lip at her feet. The concerned looks at her back. And the living consternation still slow walking his stoic ass out of the danger zone. The heat coming off his side long glare as he finally passed in kind. All of it was needed. Because all of it was in danger.

As those feelings mirrored almost too poignantly in reapplying red. Seth adding in his own focus, his own need to know what he was dooming with this need. The irking grit between his clawed toes, the inflowing chill of the beaten forest beyond, the slight peeking ray of their local star rising into its highest. A brightening reminder of what was coming. Only shaded by the kicked up eyewall losing its grandeur to prevailing winds, and fought for stature by that rising alien star at ground level. And by what it would take to put it down.

A power that was drawing his focus lower.

And lower.

And lower.

Like a winding clockwork spring.

A sudden snap and the dance was started with preternatural choreography that needed to be in sync to the letter. Two sets of questing hands shooting to their points, one high and one low. The high breaking off and twisting in step, twisting in shape to that set form and set dimensions. A halo of orange flashing into being, a diameter matched to the lip she stood upon and folding in on itself to blinding density. But a with width that needed to rise and rise. That twist shot wide, shot out to the sky doomed to be sequestered away. That halo expanding, spreading across it with no end in sight but the very edge of this cloud walled battlefield. Edge hurtling to breaking speeds, swirling like an iris opening to the world. But closing it to what was coming.

Those hands opposite hitting their mark and finding their line, because it had been set with more purpose than to just skewer that alien star. A divining rod of guiding energy, that spear driven deeper than it should have. Letting that thing run wild and roughshod, but finding its goal shining bright and roaring below it all! And tethering it to this higher need!

Another snap in this dance of summoning calamity. Mirrored horizontal as high went low all the way to the ground. That roof of subjectively tarnished hope falling like a curtain before this act could finish. Falling in tight with the edge of this pit set to open forth. Orange burying deeper into that empty soot, a final precaution to set this wall to its needed maximum.

Because those opposite hand shot high, with their weightless cargo in toe. With a plasma blue wake raking its arrival in wisping underestimation. Of what bloated out its preceding forms in overshining light, in the starting dregs carried forth and dancing into those hands. As all felt the rise of something that

Should!

Not!

Be!

Pulled!

A dread, a fear of something yet unknown approaching. An impossible thing to escape as the finery of its arrival towered before those caught in the lurch. But this expenditure, this pageantry, this wasted time in the face of the doom already there now. The one rising back to full snuff, that alien menace star glaring at its brother, its shaper. The one that dared to deny it further!

The cracks of its armor filled in, its being resolidified in its taken place. But still it was unable to escape the common dread of watching on. Unable to scry what this was all meant, not even as that local star filled that hole in this shaded sky. Filled it more than it had ever shown before. Blinding eyes down to the more personal lights before them. The ones filling those high weighed down hands.

As they shot in at their sides…

And pulled!!!

The moment flashed like a failed reminisce, a longing memory held to, a once nice and temperate present turned past in an instant. In an instant as all hell poured from that sequestered sky! A roar, a torrent, the air asunder for the briefest moment it could even stand! Alight with a true blue and green and pink and violet and red and fire and stellar ray!

An aurora of particles caught in this path of magnetic rend, a spiraling impacting instant of the sun allowed to say hello! Ionized lines of burning sky plunging down from their highest precipice, falling into this empty pit! This empty nothingness that felt cosmic impact a hundredfold! This truest form Aurora Poximus! Bearing down on its center, its focal, its pierced black heart! Flaring like a stove top meant for a god! Dust became glass and glass became boil! Molten white bubbling into frothing rings resting up! Before it was all beaten flat!!

A true rival to that flying brick wall, the concrete tone of solar wind piercing the veil! Waves upon waves upon waves upon waves! The breath of a true titan too solid and constant and no longer dampened by vacuum or magnetic shield! A tone beaten in for all to see and feel, that barest millimeter of hope reverberating like stereo Mt. Everest! Monumental driver threatening to liquefy every bone by just being in its presence! But without who this pain wouldn't even be possible! As that pit felt all of this once passive wrath first hand!

Metal kicked down like gravity had blown its knob clean off, outer layers sheering into spalling like over wet paint, melting near to boil in just this opening salvo! Rays of every shade from alpha to zeta, shaming that atomic butcher to little more than an ant before a mountain! Threads sliced julienne, photons and particles and the menagerie of cascade fusion catching what they wished! Regardless of matter or physical scale! The half-awake idiot buried inside boiling alive like a crab in its shell! The being it consorted with wincing like a sped up mold around a salted avalanche! But still-

This was not enough to end him!!

Threads snapped back into place as more rain cut them apart. Connections alive and flailing like severed tendrils. The armor stayed its solid molt, willpower locking it to simply ice in the microwave. Countering wrath with caustic refusal, hunched but fighting in the face of rising glass tides. The body inside reformed as much as it charred, he was not driving meat to just fill space. Form and function together and withstanding, something to coil around and scream into this broiling void! This roiling lake being flattened between! The fire of an atmospheric destruction, torture of a world being beaten apart at its seams! Not even this was enough to kill him! Not even close!!

But...

But that wasn't be the goal. That wasn't what this was for! As that menace star rose up from its beating to see its twin for the hypocrite he was!

And see that second stretch beyond its control!!

A kick off, a frantic splattering of what was too slow to get out of the way! An overriding overdrive to catch up with what was outpacing it beyond reason! The molten terrain sloshing into solid flowing shapes, the flailing aurora diming away at the edges, the world on all sides coming to a grinding standstill! Those beating stellar breaths becoming solid ceilings of distorted air, those burning particles dimming away as their constant flicker lost pole position!

Everything was falling, everything was losing, everything was cutting down to the barest sliver of what could be thrown fast enough to catch up! A single claw forced out, armor shearing off as not even matter could not hold! Finger not even there below! A single chance to stop what was coming, to take a piece and match! To survive!!

But all of it!!

ALL OF IT!!!

Was far

Too

Slow

As that twin star opened.

And became the only one left in the sky.

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