14 :c

𝘉𝘢𝘯𝘨!

The sound, like a thundercrack, is sudden and unexpected.

However, despite it's incredible volume, the sound is gone as soon as it comes, no ringing in the head, no time to so much as flinch.

At the same time, everything in front of me flickers slightly, like the world itself is somehow lagging.

Our Mexican standoff comes to an abrupt end as we look down the street where, behind Dovah and Morrigan, stand Pop Stop and Redemption.

I suppose that's what Pop's power feels like then.

The first person to speak up is actually Dynamite, who moves for the first time.

"You two go deal with the Heroes, I'll teach our mutual friend here a lesson." His gruff voice commands and find myself surprised by how easily Morrigan follows his orders.

Even as I turn to face Dynamite, I idly hear the roars of fire and bears down the street.

"Hey there tall dark and handsome~ ready to start killing each other?~" I ask as we start closing the distance between us, my tails dancing behind me.

Dynamite comes to a stop about ten feet away from me and speaks with a dismissive tone of voice that kind of annoys me.

"Hmph, you are no fighter, your form is garbage."

What kind of bullshit is that?

"I killed your friend over there, I killed Clay."

He just scoffs.

"You killed them with your power alone, you are clumsy and unpractised. No 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮."

He stands in front of me, hands in his pockets, staring down at me through the holes in his metal mask.

"I'll give you a few free hits, come on."

This asshole...

Whatever, he wants me to get free hits?

Then I will give him what he wants, I'm nice like that.

With annoyance at his dismissal of me fuelling me, I bound forward and swing a punch with everything I have straight at his centre mass.

Thud.

I hit skin, then I hit metal. He doesn't even flinch.

I however, do worse than flinch.

𝘊𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘬.

I 𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮 as I hunch over, cradling my completely 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 right arm.

I feel tears well up in my eyes as pain becomes my whole world and my vision goes white.

There is a 𝘷𝘢𝘴𝘵 difference between breaking your wrist and having your 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘮 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘳 all but 𝘭𝘪𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘥.

After what felt like hours but was probably only a few moments, I can open my eyes through the pain to actually look at my arm, almost immediately wishing I didn't.

I can see bones and flesh sticking out from the skin basically everywhere, as my arm does it's best impression of an empty sleeve by just hanging limply.

Even as I can see bones and muscles slowly, 𝘧𝘢𝘳 𝘵𝘰𝘰 𝘴𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘺, realign themselves, stitching my arm back together.

Not wanting to look at it anymore, I turn away, only for Dynamite's masked face to take up my vision.

Anger surges me and I ignore my broken arm to swing for the side of his head with my other arm, hitting his mask hard enough to leave a dent.

The sound it made was indicative enough of the force behind it.

His head only tilted slightly, and he corrected himself to look down at me again.

Meanwhile, my hand and wrist are 𝘱𝘶𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘥.

"You're done then?" He rhetorically asks.

Ah.

...Fuck.

"I'm gonna take that as a yes."

I open my mouth to respond but before I can say anything, my breath leaves me thanks to the force hitting my gut. I can barely hack out a cough before my vision explodes into stars., my legs becoming weak for a moment, making me stumble around like a drunk.

Everything is spinning.

He'd hit me with what I'd done, just... better.

Punches from normal people don't really hurt, but from Dynamite, it feels like 𝘐'𝘮 the normal one.

"If you had any form of skill, you might've been able to do something with those free hits."

His words bring me back to reality, and I throw my now healed arms into punching his bare chest.

I graze his skin, leaving it red with my own blood, but the 'clang' of each hit shows how little I'm actually doing to him.

He grabs one of my arms, locking it in place, then he raises his fist.

My vision blacks out, colours quickly popping into existence once more. It was like a kaleidoscope, colours everywhere. Half of it was red.

I think he punched the side of my head six times before he let me go, making me stumble backwards.

I think something broke, my vision was worse. I couldn't see properly.

Something hits my chest and it feels like a train hit me.

His foot? I think? He kicked me?

I fly back, spinning over the ground to a stop.

Slowly, my vision recovers and I force myself onto my hands and knees.

Everything hurts. The world is spinning.

"You're a tough one, that's for sure."

His voice taunts me.

It pisses me off.

"It's not often someone can get up after taking a hit from me."

A tail lashes out.

It blurs, intending to sheer him in half.

However, nothing is sheered.

Instead, Dynamite blocks my extra appendage with his forearm, the force sending him sliding back a few steps.

"That's better. You came into this fight with quite a bit of pride didn't you?"

I get back to my feet, ignoring how my tail comes back to me without a thought.

"You came at me, thinking you'd what? Out-box me? That you wouldn't need your power to fight me?"

My vision still isn't perfect and my body is still healing, but I glare at him all the same, not even bothering to wipe the blood from my face.

"But now you're thinking 'fuck it' right? 'Fuck pride, I'm gonna kick this assholes ass'?"

He isn't wrong.

I send both of my tails forward, one delayed behind the second, both intending to skewer him.

"Good! Stop fucking around, and fight me!"

I ignore his yelling and focus on my tails.

The first one is dodged by a side step and the second blocked by his crossed arms as he rushes for me, his skin taking on the sheen of the steel that I am intimately aware lies beneath it.

Before I can bring my tails back, Dynamite is in front of me.

I barely manage to twist out of the way of his first swing, however I am off balanced to dodge the kick that follows it.

However, instead of the expected pain, I feel the feeling of flying as my tails both dig into the ground where they are, behind Dynamite, and lift me up and 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 him.

Huh, I can do that?

Hanging ten feet in the air by my tails that I am using as stilts, I think about turning around, so that I am facing Dynamite again, and following instincts I didn't know I had, one of my tails pulls out of the ground and spins me around.

Awesome.

Now.. how exactly does this help me? I only have two tails.

I'm not given any time to ponder that as a familiar 𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘨 sounds out, followed by a wall of fire appearing and charging down the street at me and Dynamite, who somehow seems to have been frozen for less time than me since he's already moved a little.

Right as I prepare my tails to launch me away back to the roofs I hear another 𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘨 and the next thing I know all I can see is Redemptions red-silver flames.

I expected burning, I expected pain, what I did 𝘯𝘰𝘵 expect is for it to only feel 𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘮.

Ok, warm is pushing it a bit, more like uncomfortably hot, like an unexpected sauna, I would imagine. I've never been in a sauna though so I can't be sure.

A moment passes and the fire dissipates, leaving me standing on my two tails in the middle of the street, Dynamite nowhere in sight, with little Red and Pop taking his place.

I try to process what just happened and I can't help but feel cheated.

I mean, sure, I was getting my ass kicked a little, but I was just about to turn it around!

They let him get away.

A quick glance around doesn't reveal any unconscious villains, so I can only assume the other two got away too.

Such useless heroes.

"Tear! please come with us peacefully!"

Haah?

"You let them get away." I don't even know why I'm bothered about this, every good game is about give and take.

You win some and you lose some.

"You let them get away." As I repeat myself I learn something new about myself.

This all might just be one big game.

𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘐 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨.

I'm moving before I can even think about it, my tails launching my body like a missile straight at the pair of them.

𝘉𝘢𝘯𝘨.

A wall of fire greets me, but I can still see the two of them behind it, and the fire doesn't hinder me in the slightest.

I land right in front of them with such force that I crack the street and possibly my ankles too, but I don't care as I lunge up and lash my fist out with a shout to Pop's gut that takes the air out of her lungs.

"Useless!"

My form is still garbage, but these two are no brutes, so she folds around my fist before being thrown a few paces backwards, landing harshly on the ground.

As I turn to Redemption, fire consumes my vision, but knowing how useless it is, I ignore it completely as I bring my now raised fist down on her face, sending her crumpling to the ground with a scream.

"Failures!"

Standing over the both of them, panting from exhaustion and pain and just so 𝘮𝘶𝘤𝘩, all I want to do is go home and take a nice nap, maybe grab some food on the way.

But I am still angry, so I don't feel like leaving without saying a few words first.

"You call yourself heroes!? Pathetic." I spit, "four villains were here today. One of them will never hurt anyone again. That was 𝘮𝘦. Three of them are free to keep doing what they have been doing. That. Was. 𝘠𝘰𝘶."

Obviously, I don't 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 care about them being villains and doing villain stuff, but I want my words to 𝘩𝘶𝘳𝘵 these bitches for taking my prey away from me.

Whatever, I got one, that's good enough.

I can always get the others some other time.

"Just remember what I said earlier, every time you spare an enemy you could have killed, any blood they spill is on 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 hands."

Sighing to myself, I feel the anger leaving me at just how pointless this whole thing is.

You win some, you lose some.

If I throw a tantrum every time I lose something then I will never succeed long term.

Whatever, I want to go to bed.

Turning around, I don't look back as I leave, however I do make sure to grab Matchsticks body as I go.

Waste not, want not after all.

The next day, or I suppose, later that day, after a nice long sleep I wake up to a bunch of text messages from James and Theo, James even sending a few videos, about how the new vigilante took out another villain.

Apparently someone recorded the whole thing and posted it on PHO, though they weren't close enough to get audio, which means no one knows why I suddenly attacked the heroes at the end.

Then again, I don't really know why I did that.

I just 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 didn't like that Dynamite just left before we properly decided a victor.

It just really pissed me off, like if you're playing monopoly and once every property on the board has been bought, everyone just decides to stop playing.

It's annoying.

Still, it's nice to see how despite most people condemning me, there is quite a number of people on my side, even saying the heroes are in the wrong.

That's fun at least.

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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

Ok, so this chapter confused the shit out of me, because I really wanted to basically copy a scene from another fic (Centipede, google it), entirely because I wanted to get in a line about how Lusia has no form, but then I ended up struggling how to get it in, but now that that's over, I can finally kick things off for real, also I wrote and rewrote this chap so many times that I have no clue what I actually kept lol.

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