I Am Rage {Superhero, Action, Tragedy}

Sidelines. Effort being ignored because they weren't the headliners for this big show. Because they had a job and were going to hold to it. To keep these fanatics down and out however they could. With metal more mundanely wielded, with strength too simple to stand the center stage, with sound and fury of too low a caliber. But they weren't weak, they couldn't be. They just weren't the peak, so had duties to uphold so the real heavy hitters could slug it out undisturbed by the rabble. Ready to drag off their brought down belligerents when their way was clear and the need arose too great.

But situations change and conditions prove the determent to such choreography.

The heat, the sparks, the rush of weight so dense it could tear at you just by being swung in your presence. If you could even avoid it. The battle not theirs was proving too much to be adjacent. And that was just what crashed about in the middle.

The bodies beneath them, under foot and grasp and powered extremity. They didn't want to be kept down. Some still hiding fragments, some still juiced from their time as bearers of their god's grace, some just outright strong. But all well whipped into a fervor at the sight of their true champion. None even thinking to go quiet before the avatar of their god. That name ringing out over and over, suffocated under roaring and clanging but called out regardless. Like they wanted to give all the power they had left to it to make him real in full once more.

Like the real one wasn't stood just before them, awash in that same heat.

Like Seth wasn't there hearing his name placed upon this new abomination. Like he wasn't feeling the admiration fighting those holds. Like he wasn't numbly feeling the ire of the heroes behind him. As he watched his suit, his form bastardized, rip around like an animal and be burned for its existence.

"Is this what you fucking wanted you bastard!?"

Half that ire, stuck with his boot on a cultist's back, couldn't keep himself quiet either.

"These monsters back in the world!!"

'Shut up…'

The constant cheering, the heat beating, the hits rumbling. So similar it would have been nostalgic. If it wasn't sickeningly hitting him at last.

"You think your god is worth more death?"

The other ire trapped back with hands outstretched and focus wrung for all the faint energy it could coalesce.

'Just shut up…'

This was all so familiar in the wrongest way. So constant. So demanding he know his past in full.

"You think any of this is right!?"

It was just too much.

"No…"

To not say it and quiet what could be.

To silence the detraction, let real heroes fight over what was right and wrong. Because that wasn't who he was, what he was allowed. All he could be… All he wanted…

"I just want my name back."

Was to break this lie wide open.

Let that heat wash over someone else as he turned away. Let them feel the brunt he was stymying for them. To make way for the crash of opposing forces so his words could be theirs to bear alone. Let them feel fear in the face of half of a half. As this monstrosity and that fiery family clashed to all's detriment! And he moved to where all his battles led.

As claws carved air and fists flew counter en masse! Armored forms ducked and jetted and dodged and took that claw for all its over extension! Green fire grinding it to a halt so the rest could take the advantage. Only to be whipped back before his own grip could release! And yet release those massed attacks were!

Flames poured cavalcade, pounded armor plates poorly fed. Slammed into scales that charred yet defied their assaults. All of it cracking them under the weight of the new and the force of the vengeful. Yet only making head way in pissing this beast off! That claw bearing their eldest brother back down upon them!

Yellow and magenta caught in the clubbing and made to clear the way! For the stake hurtling down on indigo as she sprawled out to dodge. Only for that red stay-at-ranger to burst in and swat those spiking claws wide with her entire shoulder! Sending the whole arm wide and clearing their way for a change!

For their mother to cut in close and shut that jaw up!
Force that misbegotten visage high with its guard all but open. For pink and chartreuse to join in on the rebuttal and pour on the tacky hell that was all three of their own flames! To blast it back again all the way to that stage. Not in arcing fall but burning tumble off its feet. Crashing it across the glass in glistening cacophony. Till it all gave out, and the roar of pain beat back that of flame.

As step by step Seth followed down the fervent, the wrought, the all too much that drew down all that he had managed in its face. It's not like making a new laceroid was intentional, like this was anything more than just why he needed to be here. But these people who claim to want him ascendant. See him as nothing but that thing. See him as the guilty for reviving a nightmare they knew only in story. In lies told by want of his power.

Well… there was one who understood his truth maybe.

One holding his side still broken a little from where he'd ripped off a titanium rib. Limping to block him from ever getting away. Half naked, half able to walk, and yet wholly squaring off with a fire that rose high off of his fear. This infiltrator. This Tlaci…

This familiar feeling.

"Yhu… what the huggrrr! What the hell are you!?"

Seth could almost see it, dread it in a way. Even without the armor, the feathers, the trappings of a speaker to an almost better pantheon of gods. He could... almost see him again now. In that scowling crazed face he finally registered. Both seeing a truth neither had been ready to accept.

That Tlatoani had had children to carry his memory forward. Better than he could have.

Their tanned features lining up as well as generations could shift them. Looking into those stark soft eyes taking him back to that parade, when he finally meet his hero face to face. That happy memory almost faltered and forgotten, as he cried himself to sleep over seeing his hero as nothing but a smear on the road. As a dashed piece of wood and obsidian glared the ire of those gods up at him. Feeling his repaired memory, his soul given more, be judged for what he dared harbor and hold dear. What a child's hopes became in a past seen as betrayal. But that past was so very long ago now. And all that mattered anymore…

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Was the buzz raking the air.

Those armored colors regrouping and redressing their barely wounded pride. Making ready to make dust of this demigod. Even as the smoking remains of the front of that stage sparked to life. Even as that green alien light burned through. They knew it would come to this, that battling a power like Seth's was never going to be easy. But if they felt even a fraction of what he felt now, they would not be clustering so tightly. As that mechanical whir, dreaded and taking, found its igniting tempo.

"Answer me!!!"

The reminders on all sides. The pain before and the pain there after. Lives snuffed out and relived as horrid nightmare in flash threaded memory. In his own guilt highlighting that forming star.

"You… can't be him. He's dead!"

As this next in line saw for himself, that one thought fallen had never left the sky. Just burned out so others could shine brighter.

"Life is funny. Things change. Things stay the same."

Seth could not but stay his place as Tasha's children braced for what they had no nightmares of. Only training unable to make them feel its gravity. Make them feel what their mother was feeling as she rushed to their forefront.

"What was paid for gets stolen away. What was taken finds a new home."

Those almost hysteric eyes saw the truth as he'd inadvertently given to him. By power more than just a weapon that had been bloodied and broken and left to rot on a desolate road. By a child that couldn't bear to know it had been there.

He could see and know the soul better than Tlatoani. Know it as it was written without a focus like that broken macuahuitl. Even in such adverse forms such as Seth's. And so could handle what he had fused to his own being to fool this cult. And so knew what had ripped that disguise off of him. What stood there watching his first damning return to sear his soul. The one that had realized this cancer wasn't just corruptive.

It was greedy.

It was whipping open with its stolen visage! It was shining with light too telltale to have been real! It was letting that star out of its glutted throat! So that it could die and be reborn as death to thieves!

Shattering smoke and rippling sand! Forcing all to see and feel what the end of days would be! A new hue, a new emotion, a new laceridic abomination born from another mistake! Roaring out its caustic existence!

Finding out that power is too much for control.

"And always... it just falls on me to set it right."

As that visage whipped wild! As plasma found its own way forth! And as those eyes found raw terror upon them with his hand hooking around his shoulder! To throw him out of the way of a death none deserved!

As a beam of green and fire and hell spit from that maw! Carved across the sand, turned glass to melt and melt nothing! Tore passed the family and up the emptied stands! Up right through where wild densities drew it! Up right through where this Tlaci was once stood! Now where nothing but burn existed.

His cries muted, his impact alleviated by another frozen in the light. Stopped in the stun of power displaying where it should not be. Yet shielded from its worst by the one most decrying.

This was not their hell to plie.

Yet take it did, yet stake it has! That patchwork parasite chomping off the outburst before he raked the sky. Maw finding the rhythm to make power his. Cutting its roar to sucking echo. Reverberating the consciousness it held upon Seth as he stood his ground. As he felt that buzz flash back up to whir. And saw those armored fire fighters caught in the lurch!

Drawn back, flank receding, fear fully shown through reflective helmets. But spared for the moment they had in knowing fully what was before them. Before that star shined again! Before that maw braced and claws gouged! Before worked through effort found throughput! Before the spark of more than animal in those greed burning eyes found them stopped dead!

Before their mother was the one to save them!

A flash, a pure pulse of over wrought grip! A striking burst of plasma hitting armor square! Heat was her life, will more than enough, but force still had its say! As Tasha was blown across the arena rather than her children scattered to the wind.

Smoke and cries. Sand made ash of glistening chaff. A rut of burning pain leading all the way to that damnable wall. A molten crater marring and smoking across her chest, but a painful reel saying what emptied lungs couldn't. What-

"MOM!!!"

What that pink brat made audible.

She ran from the clouds of vaporized non-Newtonian nonsense. Ran for her mother trying to desperately get up and breathe. Followed close by brothers and sisters just as unable to stay on target. To stay in the fight. To not break when their family took the hits meant for them! Yet their running to help, their shattering of the bystander paradox, was caught as was expected. As that light shined again.

Those in the sprint found no destination. Those still before it stuck contorting in fear. The one in its path desperately wrenching her mother off the ground. But mechanical assistance was not enough as servos whined in protest of what was too late. Leaving only will and determination all that was left! All that could be mustered! As that pink haired girl, that Tyra, let her mom go and stood before that light!

Let it bath her, let it stab at her, let it mark her as sacrifice so another could live! As the clouds failed to hold so that maw could bare wide! Bare its want to swallow this world whole! Damn her sacrifice, damn her determination, take the both of them for all they dared keep from him! Burn them to ash for the crime of taking what was owed! And make this world rue…!!

Never again.

As that light was shadowed and the only one truly worthy of wielding it took his rightful place. Make sacrifice and determination falter back to wanting to live. As Seth took the stage he claimed as his! Crunching that rut glass and shining back down on the one who he'd saved twice already! Letting the both of them feel what he really was! What he always was! As that light dared to outshine his own!

Shooting forth as pillar of raw plasmic wrath! Rivaling Phazer, but woefully underachieving! Slamming into an out stretched hand as a stone to a storm! As spire to the sea of all energy's binding!

Strands of plasma splintering off, spraying wide at nothing left for it. Burning holes in metal and concrete. Burning the air as all it was good for! As Tyra saw the chance and made that stupid choice matter!

Rounding back, slamming under her mother's shoulder, and tossing the both of them out this pit of death. So that Seth could take it all for himself! And show this fucking cult in his name they were all-

"So fucking WEAK!!!"

Letting that pillar drown him in its song, in its tone of greedy want! Let this fraction of true Averous show him what half a century has done! Let it swallow him up and blast passed, melt a hole through that wall all the way to the outside world that dreaded what he was! What all these blasphemers wanted to be made real!

And step. By step. Overmatch that flow.

As stomp. By stomp. Their divine doom manifested.

As claw by claw. Scale by scale. Snout by tail by rising horns.

He made his way!

As only he could!

All the way to its abominable source! All the way to that roaring maw just begging!

To be snuffed out!

To be shut for all the pain it revived! To be closed so none but him could bare this guilt! Because this power was never theirs!

It was his!!

And so he shut it the hell up!!

The light collapsed and slammed to nothing! Its burning brilliance wrung by the neck! Green glowing eyes bulged to the sky in an instant of throttling might! Outshined by the dull and blackened now holding it to that blue expanse. As the world was allowed to see and know more than just avarice in stellar form. As the clouds of sand and glass whirled in the absence of its passing.

All eyes left scorched, trying to make sense. Rubbing away the blind and the force of sudden stoppage. That zealot upon his stage knocked on his ass by the force pressed upon all. By the sheer weight of this shut the fuck up. Making him crutch his way back up off his own fervor at reviving his god.

Only for his god to make himself known in towering menace. Force him to see what true power was.

As Seth, monster true and all, held the 'avatar of his will' by the throat that dared. Forced these fools to bear witness to where that power came from. Shot the fear of a true god's wrath into those rapidly dimming eyes. As the smoke cleared and all were subjected to the reality they fought to not accept. To the nightmare of the real deal stood naked to their world.

Muscle coiled under scales long though dust. Claws gleaming in the sun held high. Tail threateningly calm in the torrential echo beating them down. And those eyes marking only one under his ire.

As all took in this return. This unveiling in the torrent so utterly useless. This wanton obliteration of one fear by another. From sideline to main, stand to standoff. And from stuck half way from helping, to the one huddled to the ground. As Tasha took in that form yet again. The one her savior had made low and yet burned high pyrrhic.

The one… that haunted her.

The one… that was long dead to her.

The one… that no one was allowed to revive unpunished.

Because her savior was dead.

And none would defile his memory!