I Am Rage {Superhero, Action, Tragedy}

Calm.

Focus.

Let the power come and go.

Let it ebb like waves.

Like gentle tides… across the rocks…

Let the power come and…

Let them ebb…

Like…

Like…!

Like the tidal wave felt was able to be ignored!?

Heavy boots slammed concrete caked in the ashes of industry subverted. Cracked the air stagnant with smog meant to hide it all away. Stamped out what hope it dared have in keeping away its enemies. In keeping the secrets already known in full blaring revile. Those boots stomping forward with all their hate unleashed, uncapped, unstoppable in the show it had for this place. This lie. This curse. This reminder unneeded and unheeded.

That needed to be obliterated in full.

Flanking steps fluttered down in flaming wash. Built in boosters stymying gravity to hit the ground strutting beside their charge. Less full but just as weighty. Mechanical whir in stride with that hate. Just so they could help it along, as was her right.

Forming up as she made way of ways passed concrete living standards. Passed the blocks of dilapidated housing these monsters called home. Passed the lives they lived like it was something anyone should ever choose. Until the foot paths and empty streets filled with the noise and aggregate of their ultimate demise. Their shame being yoked around their necks with metal and stern hands, and the general air of stop resisting.

A throng of knelt and sat forms. Some families, some lone. Some seemingly wounded yet not, some fresh faced with terror and awe unhurdled. All trapped and made low. All knowing the crime they committed. All knowing they were in the wrong. Because this world had showed it to them with force of arms and arms of force. Literally, as arms of light formed around a subset of those who still struggled against the inevitable they all deserved. For thinking that this was a god worth worshiping. That the light that had shown was there salvation, and not their doom.

But that sentiment, that resistance held in the overwhelm. In the face of their relics getting taken and set for destruction nothing could come back from. Because she wouldn't let them see the light of day ever again. Not unless it was the literal light of the sun as they were thrown into it! The same sun gleaming off her armor and daring any who still thought they could to fight this condemnation. Because her steps made all see and know the ultimate breadth of what was called forth to put them down. Drawing eyes of fear, eyes of anger, eyes of scorn, and eyes she would acknowledge no more. Because-

"*splouu* Blasphemous homunc-"

*KRRrAghh*

Because she wanted for nothing but to beat those eyes closed permanently!

An armored back hand knocking the vile out of one, the glare of her eyes meeting the rest who now saw her for what line had been crossed. Parting the sea of bodies bound for punishment by sheer force of presence. Hands in control pulling those too slow out of the way and as far as they could. They wanted rehabilitation and incarceration, not internment in the ground. Or over it as nothing but a splattered stain.

None denied her, none tested her already straining composure. All knew what was ahead and were getting as far away as they could with as many people as they could carry.

The red line had been called, crossed and set on fire. It was time to get the hell out of here before they were caught in the crossfire of two atrocities to peace. Thus was her curse. Thus was her stain. Thus was the guard of metal and programing that turned to honor and staunch as the black borehole in the wall of this arena was crossed into. The light denied, focused to blinding ends. But one now knew what the other would soon. That Sarah had-

"Mom! She here!!"

Eyes flashed back as if another apocalypse had just materialized to surround them. Like Cobale didn't know who she had called for. Like she was afraid of more than what was about to come down on whatever they could handle on their own.

Afraid...

Like they all were.

Like they always were.

As... as the gravity of the destruction became apparent.

In the lack thereof on all but those who had fought. Cobale's armor dashed to the ground and cratered, helmets made optional, her body suit burned like it shouldn't ever be. Josh always said she was fireproof. And strong beyond belief! And yet...

And yet it was that fear on her face, on the faces of the assholes she called children, that cemented it.

Cemented the weight of her curse coming to its full press, under all of this armored hold back. As the seethe of a thousand pounds of willpower and spite ran through her brother's teacher, irrespective of empathy or what was right. Her breath caught in the way between the inevitable. In the end of all things for several miles. But still, she fought that fear they always had. And did her best to shake off what had just become annoying rather than offensive. Because…

"It's him."

Because!!!

It all flashed in the light of scales and metal beyond her! It all haloed in that shining light still beating against her shore! The truth of that power that had not ebbed, had not been gentle, had not gone as it should! It roiled, crashed, and stayed where it was too much to bear!

Because she…!

Because Sarah was…!

"T-the- The homunculus!!"

'The wha?'

The air had changed all at once. Sure, the array of adversity lurching in front and left stunned behind him were scared, he'd just made a small sun out of some captured megawatts. Ate that power like it was nothing more than rogue shock toy. And invalidated years of work and the efforts of no doubt thousands by rending what was claimed as his back to be his alone. But that had to come with some kinda clout. Tasha knew him, this zealot had felt what 'divine wrath' he had, and no one was dead. So why was his excommunicated priest's eye line so low?

'Please don't be General Advance's-'

But his turn to see found not that star spangled missile setting foot upon his sands. Instead it was a… A child? Armored sure, heavily so. That non Newtonian stuff hardening their stature. Wait, her stature. Seth didn't really think a boy would rock an odd plate mail dress like that. Not to mention her entire countenance read as one pissed off little girl. Maybe a little older than Tasha was. Maybe just a little stunted. It was hard to tell. But the helmet… That helmet.

It was damn near the spitting image of his. Just blacked out and teched up. It even had his horns. And was glaring a ferocity that-

"Please… just keep…"

That made Tasha scared beyond what his sheer existence had flared.

Her entire family was backpedaling, if not already scrambling out the hole in the wall. Running for their own lives, as the one they had massed in defense of failed to get a foot away at a time. Eyes wide to hurting, body tensing to just ram her way through a wall for any semblance of cover, and an overwhelming pleading grit that was...

"Please just keep yourself!!"

All before cracking that tension and sprinting for the darkness, hands waving to the outside world to just get away from…

"It's just a little girl."

Seth shrugged back to his hand disciplined zealot, but found no recognition. No small in through the fear sinking him more than what 'his god' had thrown his way. Just sheer terror scrambling him back up to the stage so as to get as far away as he could from…

From…

From the buzz in the air.

That felt like waves crashing against a spire.

From the girl stood unmoved from this totaling fear she exuded onto everyone but him.

From the aura of power familiar beyond even that copied helmet.

From armor that…

"Who the hell are-"

But the time for questions had come and gone.

In flashing, burning, holing surge! In sudden lurch down to ready position! And in the almighty instant evaporation of all the distance between!

As this little girl slammed him with the sum totality of all her RAGE!!!

With power blinding and lightning torrential! Sending cheekbone to meet cheekbone and consciousness to meet the black abyss it called home! Her armor flaring harder than the Ark, crushing in the worth and wrath of time come to pass! As this fucking little girl blitzed just as fast as Seth's grand falling salvo! The thunder of the air not even allowed to clap apart his fixer upper arena! Because it was already under assault like his entire damn body!

Threefold, ninefold, too many to feel sequential! His own less truly cursed armor shattering like glass panel to a fucking hurricane! His entire body in full reverb and suddenly lariat and cratering the ground with this girl's hand around his neck!

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

What wind, what blood was even allowed to flow in him shot, sprayed in motion slowed by none but this overwhelm of the overwhelm!

The metal drum that bore them rippling and letting loose his rebound! Made airborne the pain of just a matter of fucking microseconds! All so this girl could whip out from around his throat and kick his ass upside down! All the way to his turn in a wall!

Tearing sand like a skipping stone meteoric! Rolling upright in tumble dry so that wall could set with the imprint of its recreator imbedded three feet deep! Unseated bones snapped back with the pressure propagation. Scattering molded stone and metal over that once so brazen a zealot. Now reduced and rebuttaled over again, as his refuted god received the just desserts of time spent dead.

But pain could be handled, could be accepted as such. This though was not so simple an assault. Because this girl had his power in blaring blinding course! Not hand-me-down hack jobs, not learned extremes of similar ability, the actual fucking make and model! And a torrential will to use it, as his gut became uncured leather to be beaten flat!

Beaten not senseless but utterly out of phase! Crushing concrete to splatter stars burning and haloing and snuffing out with every strike! Microcosms of stellar formation in the agony of gastrointestinal genocide! Before she had her hands crunching around his tail, before he could even have a thought or prayer!

Before that stage was scattered over again! Before edgewise became centrifuge became more oncoming wall! Splinters not even falling before his torso became lathe and chisel for her critique of his artistry! Dragging him to rut it apart and tear it asunder, so nothing would go unpunished for being from him!

Not even this single dragging mar! Her grip yanking him free and whipping him back to beat the drum of his taken field. Ring in the sound of a new god of this place! Taking what was hers by right of conquest over the one who dared show his face!

His face sickeningly made concave with his chest and knee, as flurry and fury rounded back! Slashing him upright only to slam him back down! Suffocating that fire once lit now engulfed in brighter flame! But fought all the same for the fuel on offer!

A slash of his own cutting naught but air, but forcing wide the assault so his face could reform from just that first strike! So he could feel the reverberating meter still shaking his soul as more than just all-consuming baffle! Quickening what was already trying to get to pace, scrambling upward to get back a lock on this new missile of just should-not-be! Worry flooding and burning upon that fire trying to heat up to snuff. But existential immediacy demanded more than whatever the hell this girl was! Because she was in several places at once!

Damn near down to the small tufts of sand, she was flitting around the battlefield just like his first battle with Para. Except she wasn't waiting for the attack to come, she was just outright denying Seth the chance to fucking see her! Every step a raking grate, but hammered out so quick he couldn't turn his head to in time. So that fire could be glutted on worry.

A breath like a storm in its own right, grit through his teeth at the audacity she represented in just this muted fury. Being made a fool of by a young girl was not on his list of triggers but it was steadily becoming one! And he needed at least one answer to that question utterly hung out to dry! So he had a target in mind to sock it to this brat! And she in turn had her own easily understood!

Overdrive revving as that drum rent to see him overthrown. But only found guard flush with power to stay his crown. His armor, hardened and feeling the ripple of fury personalized and personified. Digitized to organic extremes and coursing through to harden it as well. A doppelganger in the making only making that fire burn hotter! And the overdrive faster!

Angles bore sparking works of hell's hail fire. Stymied of counterattack but enough to stop the usurp with clanging defense. More sand shot to the tearing of metal, to the barrage finally match in its alacrity. Bones still screamed, armor still cracked, but all could be repaired. All could just deal with it because this was no time to even give in!

And yet ground gave, momentum swiveled as the strikes struck wide. Rends made to stop, but only made the next all the more damaging. Stuck fast, stuck in place, made the easier target for the moment it took to scrape free!

For the moment allowed to be seen.

As the one upon this tarnished throne tore apart his bounds and tore the air in scathing antispiral. Kicked small legs out from under their overwrought strike, with but the leading talon. As a claw rounded low to skewer that stolen visage and make way for what truth dared be unspoken!

As that metal and keratin and electron condensate sliced through this newest pretender from chin to snout. And wrenched the rest of her inertia apart to rip this mask right off her head! Send her tumbling with too much to counter and all the world to flood in!

For his power to crash through this remixed repost. To feel all that dared try to make him fucking replicateable! In an even worse way! As if he hadn't already made that abundantly clear it was unacceptable! The hell, the hardship, the pain it all took to even get to the part where Para dared to try. All of his time spent wanting to make his existence right. Barring all that came after, just what it was to make his armor. For their sakes and his. And to see it here, feel it now! Like a brand name, an iteration on what he and the Garkah made! The systems taken and pushed forward, the doctrine of hardened restraint taught to all these stupid fucking kids! It was all just so…!

"I... am getting... sick and tired… of everyone... trying… to fucking cop…y… me…?"

He'd thought this world twisted.

Hypocritical.

Using what he had, while condemning his memory to all out death.

Letting the scars he healed disappear from memory, so the ones he couldn't get to could overtake him.

So that his own scars could be ignored…

Not spread.

Like the stark white draping down over this little girl's gritted features.

Slicing in half the browning blonde that… that shouldn't-

"You think I want to be like you!?!"

Her differing eyes alight, blue plasma backlight to green and hazel and a soul on fire!

"That I want to be seen as a monster like you!?!"

Her fists crunching the plates of her armor tight enough the crack the Earth itself!

"I don't have a life because of you!! I barely have a family because my own mother doesn't even want to look at me!!!"

Till the crack became a ripple through the whole of her suit…

"You ruin everything you touch! You should have stayed in the ground so we could all just live in peace!"

And into the air around her!

"But if I have to put you back down for everyone to see I'm not like you…"

Till that armor, this girl, this living embodiment of all the time lost…

"Then so be it!"

Floated up with power known in whistling, ripping dread solely deserved.

"I'm going to make you suffer for everything you've done!!!"

Time lost out. That grim feeling of inevitability so wordlessly nostalgic. Sensation lost in the wholesale slaughter of everything he was. By the culmination of what he'd left behind. In the ripping apart of bravado and pride. Of air and matter in equal sunder, for daring to be in the way. In a fraternal glare turned against with prejudice. In a wild yell that broke it all in slow crawling motion. Till the only thing that Seth could feel was a regret overwriting. A sympathy caustic and utterly unraveling. A simple thought pulling his shock taught, to take what was deserved on the chin once more.

As a single thought was had so as to wish for forgiveness.

He knew he would not see.

'I'm sorry for everything Aegis.'

Till it winced him, scrunched him tight, folded back that helmet over his head in cowardice stricken strife. And made all that came before and all that came after…

INTO THE PAIN HE WHOLEHEARTEDLY DESERVED!!!!

As distance and matter and the whole of this consecration rent asunder!! To the gong of fist meeting face!! Armor splattered, no crack no break, just literal friction melting it apart! Sand made glass and made vapor and plasma by the wake alone!! By the ricochet of a full ton of worthless idiot taking it on the cheek! And boring a hole through the stand and walls and the whole damn structure!

At Mach fuck-you!!

Cratering air and metal and concrete to disintegrated jetsam!! Concentric obliteration in totality holing! Not even felt, not even spared, just made to fly too damn fast to be slowed down by trash! And already slamming into to the tenements beyond! Ripping holes through the entire phalanx of dilapidation like a meteorite in truest form! Ducking all those unlucky to not have run for their lives. Rattling the Earth in, dashing the soul out, and shattering all that dared exist in proximity!

To the one that bore this rage!

A slow down to parabolic straight edge, tearing a valley into the industry subverted. Cushing factory and fallacy to skyward fishtail. Machinery and malice engine to glitter on the gale wind. And the molten reagents clouding this hell into precipitation haloing a form ballistic and clanging. Jettisoning all in his unwanton way, spalling metal and oil and fire apart. Into furrow interchange between potential and kinetic. All awaiting the final result in ripple fire course!

As inertia ceased and cascaded before a hope to stand could be had. Because this new epitome of Seth's own sins slammed aside his side to abide the torrential down of her pain upon his soul!!

Spine and foundation cratered in overpressure, a rolling machine splattering across its metal cooling yard, and that yard spraying shrapnel into the adjoining foundry whence! Dragged along for the ride a gong, as stone buckets upended and slathered a wake of waves of fire! Abandoned for the festivities, but duly destroyed in kind.

In time with the cavalcade, in sync with her intent. To see him crushed under all that he'd left to stagnate! All he'd powered through in death to let it waste away to nothing but memory. Now refuted in the physical and wrapping around his tail again! To send him on his own merry-go-wrong, with hell too good an escape from what he was owed! As air sliced at shattered plates and broken scales, and promised more than just more distance made instants. Rather this single hectare of industrial sprawl whipping to blur, whipping the wrong way to send him away, and set to feel her wrath transferred en masse! As bow wave to peak into the sky made to clear!

Made pillarus in the slam down of an already destroyed body! Made volcanic in its flame out and terror in its conventional high ex shatter! Of all that made and unmade in its pressure wake, all to be hollowed out and laid low! Razing more than what a single crater could, so that body could be tossed to air! And crash apart the sky with uppercut heavenward!

Numb, bleeding, trailing more than entrails as gravity fought accent. As new rage fought to keep him where there was no more dread for a fair fight left! The ripple of that co-opted air made a blur of blue and black! Made strike after crush after cave in of his form! Of the terror he once embodied now outmoded and set against in turn! Loosed upon this world with no care for the one who bore! Who had to bear! Who had to live with too much too fast! With nothing to keep and nothing to show but hate and hate in turn! Who...

Who had power showing through…

With every laden blow.

Every bone snapping a cry. Every drop of blood a tear. Every blitzing assault a tantrum unfulfilled till this day of all days. No out but this out, no allowance but what they wanted of her. No care for what they harbored but what needed to be destroyed. Controlled.

"Well fuck that" read a rising grin. Free of what matter could see.

Let her loose, let free upon the one who deserved it! But don't you dare make her be ashamed for existing! For the glow azure that caught that ripple to its sudden own instants! With exposed bone glare and blooded teeth and all the world made still by what really shouldn't!

As the catch was found in this overwhelm of the overwhelm.

To humble her rage at last. With what it meant to be iconoclast.

A simple fist of alloy and barely clinging flesh, parrying in lightning what was once so clear a punishment! So bright a day! A dodge rippling away from sudden reversal, but no recourse but a new angle surged to. Only for that crumbled form to counter again, slash down with another punch upon armor now feeling a will that should be flattened! Knocking off course this now seen but still to be heard. So that words could be exchanged in blow by blow!

Another and another, guard up faster than untrained senses could attain. Let alone still bound of flesh. Clanging and gonging with frustration becoming yet still to be paid in full for! As one last strike-at-thee oh nemesis foreseen, turned around her fist to open real estate. For the fist of matter and ephemeral spite to clench to fruition this his true divine smit! His own counter final, to make this unseen disparity unavoidable! And make her see the first lesson to learn.

That they were one and the same!

And it was her armor's turn to take what was owed it! Denting in liquid form, cracking the air, and sending her sailing back to Earth with her own concrete dust halo. With her own valley trenched and skidding into existence with as ever a Mach speed tumble. Till it all crumbled to a stop at the foot of his temple. At the hole bored through. Alongside all that disgorged from it and all that were beaten down in its shadow.

But that opening salvo needing to be repaid. As that broken unbreaking form settled back to what traced it upon reality. Framework existence never allowing their kind a rest eternal. Least of all in the hurtle down of his own. In the landfall of a titan challenged.

Ready for round two. And his own rebuttal to rage born to this bright shining future.

Because he was feeling something he'd never quite felt before.

And it felt too good to let die.