The Phenomena of Fireflies and Star... - Chapter 35: Chapter 35

There was a light. Everything seemed distorted and blurry, but at least there was a light.
In the blanket of darkness that hovered above him, there was a light. The more everything cleared out, the more Max could see the destruction around him.
Underneath him, he could feel a rough sheet of metal.
Somewhere beyond the darkness, coming from somewhere in the light, wafted in sounds of struggle.
They were loud, and they were getting louder. Like thunderclaps.
'Blaster rifles,' Max realized, the thunderous explosions knocking him into full consciousness blast by blast. 'They're fighting!'
He tried to sit up, but his back hurt unapologetically. He lay back down quickly to ease the pain, his hand landing on something hard but unstable. It moved the moment his hand smacked against it. Grunting through the pain, he turned his head and checked it out. A psionic scrambler helmet.
'I need that.'
Max paused.
There bloomed from within him a haunting break of realization that the blasts had just stopped.
He listened in, hoping to get more noise from outside. Anything.
But there was only nothing.
A closer look at the aftermath around him revealed fallen agents. Max couldn't tell if they were alive or dead. Judging from their positions, they had most likely died in the crash.
Max scanned the interior of the container with his empathy.
'No life,' he confirmed. 'Dammit.'
The fallen agents still had their weapons and their gear with them. Evidences of their dishonorable deaths. Max looked toward the light above him. The light was coming from a sizable hole.
'What...,' Max thought, noticing something on his right. There was a strange blue glow, faint and wavering, in his periphery. He looked toward it. It was the vault's holographic keypad. 'I need to move'.
Max grunted hard as he pulled himself out through the hole that had presumably been made via an energy blast, using much of his upper body strength to hoist himself up. He could still accelerate his self-healing, but just like in the dome, it was taking too long. He lifted himself out completely with the help of his knee.
The street looked familiar.
Max put himself in a crouched position on top of the truck's container, which had been tipped over to its side.
"Falco Central Park...," he said, scanning the strangely empty street and recognizing the area. He adjusted the weapon strap over his torso, bringing the bullpup blaster rifle to his arms before him and cradling it with the appropriate discipline. The psionic scrambler helmet he had taken from a downed agent rested firmly on his head. The sound of metal clattering on the ground made him turn quickly to the right, his rifle aimed at the ready. He saw what was making the clattering noise: a psionic scrambler helmet.
'Hall of Heroes,' he recognized the place before him. He then saw petrified bodies on the ground, their faces frozen in horror, their heads relieved of their helmets, and their positions distorted. Element was one of them.
An unspeakable coldness washed over Max as he took in the scene.
There was nothing else on the ground but a massacre. From his experience, he could tell it was a psychic massacre.
"I knew you couldn't be dead," the voice that disrupted his attention was so chillingly familiar that he felt as if he was losing blood in a snap.
It was coming from above.
Max moved quickly and aimed upward, his blood running cold at the sight of a levitating figure in a black battle suit.
At the sight of those unforgettable electric pink flames for eyes dotting the figure's pale visage.
"Nice to see you again," Malign spoke, his voice a blood-curdling mix of regal fullness and wispy reverberations. "Gabriel."
"Code Red. Security Alert. Code Red."
Ames swung his arms out to his sides, telekinetically shoving the armed personnel out of the way.
'Almost there!'
'This has to be the last wall!'
Ames charged forward, shoving his hands out to another blast. The wall blew open to the other side, allowing him to rush out of the facility to the open night sky view.
The night wind smacked him hard and cold, his hair and his clothes whipping back.
'Which direction am I?!'
He glanced behind him, sending out a psionic wave to reconstitute the walls and everything else that he had broken through, not wanting to have nowhere to go back to once he had dealt with whatever was happening. He still needed Division's help.
'Where am I?!'
A sudden chorale of electronic noises surrounded him, coming from above. He looked up in alarm, his hands charging up with energy at the sight of large white drones cornering him. Their blasters were aimed at him with the guidance of red lasers.
"Professor Andrade, stand down!" a commanding voice shouted. Ames looked ahead, at the oncoming wall of armed personnel whose rifles were now aimed at him. They rushed to corner him. They moved with impressive coordination, evident in how they went into position after stopping at a safe distance from him. Judging from their body language, their impressive gear, and their helmets, they weren't just guards for Division. They were agents. That meant that they were used to dealing with superhuman threats in the field. And judging from what Ames had observed earlier, it appeared that Division's entire human armed workforce consisted of agents. Risky. "Stand down!"
"No!" Ames cried out, unsure of whether or not he should lift his hands. He could feel a light throbbing sensation in his head. "You need to get to the transport now! They were attacked!"
"Get down on the ground!"
"You need to get to the others now!" Ames pleaded, his heartbeat now syncing with the throbbing in his head, which was starting to get worse. "Please! I-I know where they are!"
"Stand down, Professor!"
"You need to listen to me, please!" Ames continued, the throbbing inside of him significantly worsening by the second. It was starting to make him mad. "They're at..."
"Get down on the ground now!"
Ames felt a switch inside of him. A chilling shift. A warping. Deep inside his brain.
The throbbing now had a sickening, angering melody to it.
It coursed through his veins, making his fingers twitch.
'Fine,' the thought came over his mind as he released a pulse from inside of him. The drones disintegrated the moment the pulse passed through them. The pulse continued to travel outward, disintegrating the agents' guns and psionic scrambler helmets. The agents remained unharmed, as Ames had intended, and they stared at their empty hands in surprise. Some of them groped their heads in alarm.
'Now, you listen to me,' Ames sent out another pulse. This time, it was telepathic. At once, the agents caught in the pulse stood erect in attention, eyes glowing in pink. Ames telepathically planted in all of them his visual memory of the compromised Division truck. 'Send people to the Hall of Heroes immediately. The transport truck containing Max Angeles, someone you know better as your former Alpha, was attacked. And Malign might not be as dead as we'd like to believe. Move.'
'That's an order.'
With that said, Ames liberated them from his psychic grip. He ran forward, and he jumped off the ground and into flight. Hands aimed downward, he unleashed magenta streams of telekinetic energy, propelling himself faster in his ascent to the sky. The wind roared around him as he charged through the atmosphere.
'That was Malign.'
'This time, I'm killing him for good.'
Max opened fire, a steady sequence of red projectiles shooting up toward the telepath. Malign moved quickly, flying down toward him and dodging the blasts. Max followed Malign with his aim, the projectiles missing the telepath very narrowly.
'Fuck!' Max thought in alarm the moment empty clicks replaced the sounds of the blasts. 'I'm out!'
Malign was coming in close, preparing to crash onto the truck container with a strike.
Max jumped off to the ground just as the telepath crashed onto the container. The ground felt rough on Max's back as he rolled into position. He turned to look behind him, finding the telepath poised on top of the container with a fist through its surface.
"Outnumbered," Malign hissed as he pulled his hand out from the container's wall, the sound of metal tearing off accompanying the action. "Being outnumbered made me stronger."
He stood back up slowly, gracefully turning around to face Max.
"Aren't you supposed to be dead?" Max demanded, cracking his neck and getting into a combative stance.
"Says who?" Malign tauntingly asked, hopping off the truck container and landing on the ground. "Current?"
"He wasn't lying," Max replied.
"He didn't know," Malign said. "He didn't know he was believing a lie. An elaborate lie. To him, his illusion was the absolute truth."
"You really are a smart son of a bitch," Max commented, taking slow steps back as Malign tauntingly approached.
"I made him make you hear what you wanted to hear, believe what you wanted to believe," Malign went on, his steps forward sinister and taunting. "You and the new Alpha. Current was an excellent domino, and I adore him deeply for it."
"I guess you can join him in death, then," Max snarled, stopping in his retreat and charging forward, throwing the rifle aside as he did. He sent his fist onto Malign's face, slamming the telepath's head hard onto the wall of the truck container.
"Ngf!" the telepath grunted at the impact. "Son of a bitch!"
Max proceeded to pummel Malign's head, unloading the strength he still had in full. Max went on and on, fist after fist, feeling the impacts of the blows more than he'd ever felt them before.
'Just keep at it!'
Malign's head was making a dent in the container wall, going further inward with every punch he received.
"Gaaaah!" Max allowed every bit of his strength to flow through his fists as he continued to smash Malign with them. "Fucking! Stay! Dead!"
He reared up for a knockout punch, shoving his fist as hard as he could toward Malign's head.
He missed.
By about a crucial inch.
'Oh no!' he thought in alarm as his fist burst through the container wall.
Malign's well-placed push kick assaulted Max's chest, sending him staggering back and leaving him shaken by the force of the attack.
"You're getting sloppy, boy," Malign said, a low chuckle in his voice as he waved his finger at Max. "I was holding back there. This time, I'm not..."
'No!' Max crossed his arms before himself defensively the moment Malign charged forward.
Air burst out of Max's mouth when Malign crashed against his solar plexus and shoved him off the ground. He felt the wind breaking apart around him as he continued flying back, Malign pushing him violently through the air.
He felt an impact, the shockwave of the crash following through in a loud explosion.
White flashed in Max's eyes upon feeling the burst of pain inside of him, and he was wordlessly gurgling as he felt himself being pushed down hard against the ground.
There was another sharp flash, followed by a blurry aftermath and an engulfing wetness. The sound of crumbling matter popped into what turned out to be water around him.
'The Alpha statue fountain...,' he realized, the debris of the now shattered sculpture falling into the water.
"This is no fun," Malign commented sternly.
Max's vision cleared up, and he could see the tall telepath towering over him, fiery pink eyes contrasting the black night sky like cosmic spotlights. Malign's face had grayed out even more. He looked like a demon in the night.
"You, my boy, are not the same prick," Malign crouched down as he spoke, the licks of the flares in his eyes becoming clearer to Max. They were almost singeing him. "It's pathetic. It's like hitting a bag. Severely unrewarding."
Max's instincts flared back up the moment Malign lifted his arm for a beat-down.
"Hrrrh!" Max grunted, grabbing Malign's wrist as the telepath's fist came crashing down for his face. "Dammit..."
'He's gotten so strong!'
Max continued to push back, a roar of struggle blaring out from him as he tried to keep Malign's punch at bay.
"Estupido," Malign snapped, using his other hand to reach over Max's head.
Max gasped at the feeling of the psionic scrambler helmet being pulled off of his head. It was a sudden steal, and he could immediately feel the heat and the gloom that emanated from Malign's energy. Max's grip faltered, and he felt Malign breaking free from his grasp, coming back with a powerful punch that crashed onto his chest.
Max croaked from the force, unable to move against the shockwave flowing through him. The telepath lobbed the helmet out of sight.
"That man from Gonzales," Malign spoke in a casual tone as he continued to hammer Max's chest. Max's instincts were on defensive mode, and he struggled to find a way out. "He was much more fun than this. He actually managed to foil my plans. Can you believe it?"
'Man from Gonzales?' Max wondered. 'Ames!'
"We never really planned on killing anybody anywhere else but Gonzales," Malign said, halting his flurry of punches. Hard and painful coughs burst out of Max's mouth, his body undecided whether to curl up in defense or to fight back. "A classic misdirection. A false alarm. But that didn't follow through as planned because of him. That... Ames. It's always the outliers. Always. Little bitches."
Max stared in helpless disorientation at the sight of Malign's hand reaching down slowly, tauntingly, toward his head. Fiery wheels of energy appeared briefly around Malign's reaching hand before stretching out into claws. Psionic claws.
"An inconvenience asking to be remedied," Malign hissed. "Like you. Alpha Phenomenon."
The claws came closer and closer.
Max could feel the hot licks of the claws' energy against his cheek, his mind beginning to heat up.
"I can see," Malign's voice was much wispier now. "That you love the man from Gonzales..."
"FTMMMMGRRKKSH!"
A resounding crash thundered in the distance, causing Malign to retract his psychic claws and swiftly turn to look behind him. More sounds of solid matter bursting into pieces exploded in the air.
Max gasped in surprise at the sight of the telepath staggering back due to a shockwave from the impact. Malign tripped over the fountain basin's wall, and Max witnessed him toppling down and out of the water, which was going down in level.
"Bad news for you, bitch!" a familiar voice roared from up ahead. Max forced himself to sit up, grunting through the pain in his chest. In the distance, past the now shattered statues lining the sides of the Noble Ground's severely eroded pathway, Max could see Ames holding a three-point landing position as if learning how it felt for the first time, eyes glowing in electric pink. Max willed himself aggressively to speed up his healing, and he could feel his regeneration picking up its pace, but he also knew he was bleeding. He could taste the iron in his throat. It hurt. He rolled away, feet hitting statue debris, at the sound of Malign standing back up. "'Cause the feeling is mutual!"
"Ames!" Malign snarled angrily. Max could feel Malign's telepathic energy flaring up.
"And I'm the fucking man from Gonzales," Ames didn't shout this time, but his voice was powerful. Just like his words. They shook Max in his core. He watched as Ames's supporting hand on the ground swept up, causing the debris to fly forward, toward the fountain like swift cannonballs.
Toward Malign.
Max curled himself up in a ball, taking cover behind the stump that remained of his statue. He witnessed Ames's debris projectiles smacking Malign out of the view, following a stream of telekinetic energy, and crashing savagely onto where Malign should be, rock after rock. The telepath's distant pained grunts, muffled by the sounds of exploding matter, were satisfying to hear.
Something landed onto the fountain, making Max roll over to the side a bit in reflex. It wasn't just anything. It was Ames.
"I felt you," Ames's hasty words as he helped Max sit up properly. Max couldn't be happier to see Ames, to have him close again. "I felt you. I'm here. I'm here."
Max reached up, smiling through the pain upon feeling Ames's face on his palm.
"You shouldn't have come here...," Max said, savoring the warmth of Ames's skin. "But thank you. Thank you."
Ames nodded at him reassuringly.
"Stay here, okay?" Ames said to Max.
Max could see intricate patterns forming in the glow of Ames's eyes. Before he could respond, Ames leaned forward and kissed him deeply on the forehead. The warmth from it felt like refuge from the cold. An inner refuge.
Ames pulled away carefully, rubbing delicately with his thumb the spot on Max's forehead that he'd kissed before standing back up and bracing himself for a continuation of his one-on-one with Malign.
Ames allowed the psionic energy inside of him to heat up. His eyes locked onto Malign, who was struggling to stand up from the debris around him. He had crashed just outside the entrance of the Hall's main building.
Malign bled from the cuts and abrasions all over his body, his suit ripped in some sections.
"Telekinetic," Malign's voice came out like a bark, followed closely by a loud cough that splattered blood onto the debris before him. Malign's laughter followed after like the hoarse grind of a conveyor belt. "What a twist."
"The man from Gonzales handed you your ass yet again," Ames taunted, a smirk on his lips.
"The last time I met you," Malign replied. "I threw you out of a building. The one before that, I fried your boyfriend's brain like an over easy."
'That would've hurt my feelings,' Ames thought, scoffing. 'Too bad for you, people know how to heal, too.'
"And each time," Ames tilted his head as he responded, knowing fully well that he'd already won this little back-and-forth. "You failed to kill me. You are some higher level of a disappointment."
That struck a nerve in Malign, evident in how the glow of his eyes grew fiercer, his skin graying out even more.
"Time to tie up loose ends," Malign hissed, his voice echoing. Ames braced himself for what was coming. He watched as wheels of energy began to form over Malign's body, moving seamlessly with each other until they compressed. They lingered before Malign's chest with the guidance of his hands. "No looser end than an inferior mind being this annoying."
Malign stretched his arms outward, an explosion of energy from his chest following right after. Ames braced himself as the energy took the form of a large orb, expanding exponentially. Coming in quick.
There was that dark switch flipping inside Ames again.
He willed a force field around Max before retaliating with a psionic pulse of his own, a dome-like construct of telepathic force expanding from the explosion of power inside his mind.
The collision of opposing psionic energies resulted in a ferocious crackle between them. Their telepathic forces pushed against each other in a mentally painful equilibrium.
Ames could feel the searing heat of Malign's telepathy in his head, but deep inside it, the cognitive box that helped him to adapt and heal was already open. It helped him regain control in the psychic collision.
Managing his breathing, Ames pushed harder mentally, finally overpowering and shattering the growing globe of psychic energy coming from Malign, consequently exposing the super-terrorist to a strong mental burn.
"Ackhhgah!" Malign cried out, his hands slamming onto his head in pain as the radiation of Ames's psionic energy washed upon him.
Ames turned his power down, his pink energy and its constructs fading out around him.
"What the hell?!" Malign shouted out, still pressing his hands against his head. "You're a fucking telepath, too?!"
"Surprised?" Ames demanded, stepping out of the fountain. "I guess you're right. No looser end than an inferior mind being this annoying."
"I'm not a fan of your tone, boy," Malign was almost breathless from his exertion of force, struggling as he put on his confident exterior again.
"You're really not used to having someone better than you, aren't you?" Ames inquired, shaking his head in disbelief at how persistently arrogant Malign was. "You just gotta' be the special one. That god complex. Superior race bullshit. You killed other telepaths just so you could keep the power to yourself 'cause you know it won't be a sweat for them to take you out."
For some reason, Malign's expression changed from confident to disgusted. Almost hurt. Offended. It got worse as seconds passed.
Malign walked forward, stepping over the debris around him. Ames readied his hands, coating them with telekinetic energy.
"You think I killed them because I wanted to be a telepath?" Malign demanded. Strangely, the pink in his eyes faded away, revealing their true hazelnut colors. "You really think I wanted to be like this?"
"Here you are," Ames replied, smirking. "A proud terrorist. Why would I think otherwise?"
Malign's head retreated, his eyes widening in brimming anger. It seemed that his reaction was coming from somewhere deep.
"Here you are," Malign snarled in response. "A superhuman. I guess you've always wanted to be superhuman, right? Or did I read you wrong before?"
'What is his deal?' Ames wondered, charging up the telekinetic energy he was more than ready to shoot Malign with.
"I was the only one to figure out that the failures weren't failures," Malign said, leaning forward a bit, moving toward Ames cautiously until he was merely three meters away. "They were telepaths. Unstable. Chaotic. They caused disorder wherever they went. Used other superhumans to do whatever they imagined. They couldn't control their power; their power controlled them. Nobody knew they existed. Except me. So I did what I had to do."
"Lies," Ames resisted, leaning forward as he replied, mimicking Malign.
"Why would I lie to another telepath?" Malign demanded, nodding slowly at Ames's implicative silence. "You can read my mind."
"He's telling the truth, Ames," Max said, disbelief in his voice. Ames glanced back at him. "He's telling the truth..."
'No,' Ames didn't want to buy it, but Max was picking up honesty from the terrorist. An honesty that Max clearly didn't want to believe either but couldn't deny.
"I don't want to believe it," Max added. "But he's really telling the truth. He has never been this truthful before 'cause he knows he can't lie to you..."
"I wanted to save everybody from the weapons of mass destruction hidden in their plain sights before the threats became too powerful," Malign added. Ames looked toward him again. "And what did I get in return?"
Malign recharged his powers, the wheels reappearing around him, traveling upward and shrinking as they ascended his body. The wheels then transformed into a crown-like construct over Malign's head. His eyes began to glow in pink again.
"I became the very monster I tried so hard to save the world from," Malign said, slowly levitating off the ground. "Perhaps it takes a monster to kill a monster, so I gave the world a monster. I'm a disappointment? Aren't you now a superhuman? A telepath like me?"
That popped many restraints in Ames's system, and he began to levitate as well.
"We're not the same," Ames declared, feeling his eyes glow brighter.
"You might want to look back at all of the choices you've made," Malign replied, a smirk forming on his face. "Oh, right. They still don't matter now. Harvey's gone. We're both telepaths. And you will never get to live a happy life with Gabriel because he's out of time, you can't keep a love alive, and you're just like me!"
That was it.
Ames had heard enough.
The inner throbbing inside him came back.
This time, because he called for it.
"Haaaa!" Ames cried out as he lunged forward into flight, crashing right onto Malign's stomach. He pushed as hard as he could, using his telekinesis as a booster.
He shoved Malign against the entrance, breaking their way into the main building. Ames coated himself with telekinesis, unable to feel the pain the blast fragments would've otherwise made him feel.
Ames kept pushing, one hand now on Malign's face to keep his break-in headfirst, penetrating the stale air in the building, and shooting through the alabaster sculpture depicting the Enforcers standing together.
They made it to the wall at the far end.
Ames slammed Malign onto the large painting on the wall, growling from the force he exerted. The glass covering of the painting shattered, shards raining down like hail around them. The canvas had been ripped, the cracks on the wall behind it severe and almost like a web.
Malign's head swayed groggily, the lacerations on his face fresh and bleeding. His eyes flickered at first before glowing in pink again.
Ames wasn't about to lie. It felt so satisfying. His hand transferred to Malign's neck.
"You wanna' fly, Elmer?" Ames whispered hoarsely, leaning close to the telepath's face. "'Cause I wanna' fly."
He looked up, keeping his hand and his telekinesis tight around Malign's neck.
"Time to see some stars, Elmer," Ames said, unable to stop his cackle as he launched off the floor and into flight, pulling Malign up to make him a battering ram again.
They made it to the sky, dust falling off of them as they flew higher and higher. Ames couldn't bring himself to stop. Watching Malign suffer in his grasp was incredibly rewarding. Ames had a good view of Malign's hurt face from where he was positioned. The stars in the sky seemed few due to the clouds, but Ames knew he was about to light the sheet of darkness up. He halted their flight, positioning himself until they were at the same eye level.
Malign's breaths were heavy, his skin still bleeding.
His old cuts were still open.
'Wait a minute,' Ames realized, staring at how Malign only kept looking worse. He was truly resilient, though.
Still, somehow, Malign's wounds just kept piling up, staying fresh.
Even the cuts on Malign's torso, Ames noticed as he scanned the telepath down.
"I'm sorry...," the telepath's voice a low creak. Ames looked back up at the telepath's face, finding two glaring spotlights for eyes looking back at him like the ends of gun barrels. "Not many stars tonight."
Ames readied himself for Malign's fist, which was coming in fast, glowing like a magenta meteor.
'Ah, crap!' Ames let Malign go, instinctively shielding his face with his arms. He'd never really trained to fight well mano-a-mano. He felt the impact on his arms, the layer of telekinetic energy over his body mitigating it. It was still very strong.
He flew back uncontrollably, struggling to keep his arms up to defend himself.
He could feel Malign cutting through the atmosphere.
His breath popped out of his mouth the moment Malign struck him again, on the stomach this time. It was like being shot off a cannon. He couldn't stop himself from flying back, and his telekinetic armor was failing, too.
'Ah, this isn't good!'
He braced himself for any impact, hoping his telekinesis would hold. Desperately hoping. Before he could think of a way out, he felt his wrist getting caught.
'What?!' he thought in alarm, lowering his guard. Big mistake, he realized too late.
Malign had caught him in a grip.
Ames's eyes widened at the sight of Malign's arm rising to backhand him.
"Gah!" he cried out, feeling the impact hard on his cheek. His armor was really weakening now.
"Who's seeing stars now, boy?!" Malign's voice was like a mad bellow of bloodlust.
'No, crap!' Ames thought, catching a glimpse of Malign's fist going back up.
Ames shut his eyes, grunting hard due to the impact right on his nose. His head whipped back, followed by his body. His mind had gone white, lost in a painful flash. It was as if his brain was ricocheting off the walls in his skull.
'I need to fight back!'
"Gugh!" he coughed out, feeling the sudden grip of Malign's strong hand around his neck. He was feeling it for real this time. He had lost his armor. Malign turned around, dragging him along in the turn before flying forward again.
Ames clawed at Malign's arm, gasping for air, his eyes trying to focus on the telepath's ghastly face.
"Raw power," Malign said, a smile on his bloodied face as they came to a stop. "But untrained. Pathetic. I was right about telepaths like you."
Ames's brief moment of relief when Malign finally let his neck go was followed by a moment of alarm. He forced himself to erect another telekinetic coating quickly.
Malign lifted his leg high and swiftly sent it back down. The blow was too strong for Ames's shield to hold. He felt it shatter, felt the shock wave of Malign's kick smacking him back down.
Ames tried to fly, but he couldn't think through the force that had left him trembling. He couldn't. He continued to fall, desperately trying to conjure his protective armor back. He couldn't.
'No!' his mind screamed out at him. 'This is gonna' hurt!'
He curled himself up into a ball, hoping that his strength would be enough to save him.
And then there it was.
He vomited air upon the impact on his back, the explosion underneath him like a detonated C4. He felt the unstoppable vibrations rocking his body, thrashing his insides, and burying his vision in a sudden bath of white light. He felt himself breaking through the surface, seeing in the blur the hole he'd created.
He crashed for the last time, his breath erupting from his mouth and leaving him gasping for air.
'No! I can't lose to him! Not now!'
Ames tried his hardest to see clearly, to see what had happened. He did. For a brief moment.
He could see through the hole in the ceiling Malign's figure in the night sky, marked by the glow of his eyes.
Ames didn't want to blink; each glitch of darkness threatened permanence. He couldn't control it. He felt his energy drop, his eyes failing to stay in focus.
He kept his eyes on Malign, resisting the rest he was being tempted with by the sinking feeling in his body.
'Not this time...,' Ames thought, vision blurring.
Before darkness overcame his vision, a nerve-wracking sonic boom tore through the haze, and Ames caught a glimpse of a magenta beacon of light blasting Malign out of sight.
"Hnnnnaaaah!" Max roared as he unleashed his energy through the laser beacon. He allowed the full force of his anger and his frustration to fortify the neon pink beam of light shooting out of his chest, ramming Malign out of the troposphere.
It was almost like he was throwing off a large boulder the moment he deactivated his beam, his body buckling forward from the exhaust of energy. He shot his hands out, breaking his forward fall and giving himself sturdiness as he struggled to catch his breath and tame his heartbeat. He had almost fired a golden beam there, realizing in a split-second how that could've suggested to potential witnesses that he could still be alive. He had to stay dead to their knowledge. Since the battle had been a violent clash of pink psionic energies, a pink-colored blast had proven fitting.
The cracks on the ground were rough to his palms, his finger touching the butt end of the special vial containing a variant shard. The vial, as it turned out, actually doubled as a syringe, the needles of which extended outward whenever the bottom part of it was turned. The red handkerchief that had been wrapping the vial the whole time had been carried off by the night wind. He could see it being wafted away in his periphery.
'How convenient,' he thought, telling himself how it was just his luck that Eliza had risked her already pressured career by stealing a variant shard for him. He had kept it safe in one of his jacket's two inner pockets. He looked at the gravely damaged building ahead. 'Ames.'
He pushed himself up to his feet, staggering in the physical shock of his drastic jumpstart of power display. He proceeded forward, forcing a jog. Far inside the main building, he could see Ames's unconscious body sprawled on top of rubble.
Ames still had a pulse, but it was weak. Max could feel its faint pulsation from where he was. A good plan would be to jumpstart Ames's pulse with pathokinesis. Max surely hoped that he had fully recovered his second-exposure powers. Malign had really put on muscle.
Max hopped over the debris just outside the collapsed entrance.
A figure dropped into the main building's interior, forcing Max to an abrupt stop.
"Fuck," he cussed, seeing that it was Malign, half-sunken in a small crater of his landing's making. The telepath's suit had been ripped in half, exposing his bloodied muscular build. His cuts had just started healing. He'd definitely been preparing under the radar, waiting for a moment of vengeance such as this.
Malign stood tall, his eyes glowing ominously. Angrily.
Max took a step back. He had an idea.
'Come here, you son of a bitch.'
Malign moved quickly, lunging into flight toward him.
'Now!'
Max quickly made an illusory replica of himself in front of him and flew up before Malign could tackle him, leaving the telepath to attack his copy.
He heard the telepath crash far behind him, having phased through and deactivated his illusion in the attack. He lunged toward Malign, and he slammed his palm down hard on the super-terrorist's back, burying the enraged psionic a foot into the ground.
Malign could barely resist, and he looked back at Max with wordless wrath.
Max pinned the telepath down, straddling him on his back.
"You could've chosen to be good," Max said, grabbing the telepath by the back of the head and focusing his strength on charging up the electromagnetic radiation inside of him. He could feel his insides shaking from the power that was begging to be unleashed in the fullest glory.
"I did," Malign weakly managed to say.
"Until you didn't," Max replied. Deep inside, he knew that it was about time.
He took a mere breath and brought his arms before him, his aura blooming from his body like a million prismatic refractions. He stretched his arms to the sides right after and allowed the power from inside of him to explode in a kaleidoscopic sphere of cosmic rainbow colors.
In less than a second, everything was engulfed in the expanding orb of electromagnetic radiation and untamed power.