The other boys began chanting for Rick to annihilate the unpopular Criag in an almost ritualistic manner. They obviously hoped to give their friend whatever encouragement he needed to get his fill so they could move in and take theirs.
Within seconds, both boys were back on their feet exchanging blows. Craig managed to deliver another good sock to Rick’s face, and his lower lip split in half. It didn’t take him down, though; Rick simply countered with two blows that succeeded in sending Craig careening to the pavement. The athlete then kicked the towering outcast in the gut, causing him to vomit onto the filthy ground.
“All right, all right, you got him good, Rick,” Marcus said while grabbing the arm of his friend and accomplice. “Now let us have our turn.”
Rick backed away and wiped the blood from his nose and lip. “Get that fat asshole.”
Marcus moved in and began delivering a brutal series of punches and kicks to the badly injured boy, smashing and crushing without let-up. Mick Judge’s friend Zeff Walsh then bellowed with rage and took over where Marcus left off, delivering another tremendous beating to the already severely battered teenager. The remaining three were each given their turn as promised, and within several minutes Craig’s swollen and broken body lay still in an expanding pool of blood.
Rick ended the whole thing by lifting the broken portion of a discarded brick and slamming it down upon the side of Craig’s skull. A very visible crack opened in the skin of his temple area and a quick spray of blood was expelled from it. The boy’s body then twitched involuntarily for a second before he was still again.
“Okay, okay, we got ‘im!” Marcus said. “Now let’s get the hell out of here!”
“But are we gonna, you know, just leave him there?” Ken asked with a despondent expression.
“Wtf!” Marcus exclaimed. “Of course, we’re gonna just leave him here, man! What would you like to do, drag him home and nurse him back to health in your bed? Now let’s get out of here before someone comes!”
The group of boys swiftly vacated the alley to the two vehicles they used for both arrival and escape. Of the group, only Ken displayed a bit of ambivalence over what they just did, and he gave a quick dejected backwards glance at the battered young man laying unmoving in the alley before following his cohorts in retreat.
For about four minutes Craig lay inert as the pool of blood flowing from his many open wounds and upper body orifices began growing to resemble a huge crimson Rorschach blot.
It was then that an older gentleman who lived in a small house from across the field happened to wander over to investigate the ruckus he had heard. Calvin “Ziggie” Pearson nearly fainted at the horrid human-shaped mess he saw laying near the edge of the alley. And this was a man who grew up in a rough neighborhood and had seen more than his share of disturbing things over a long lifetime.
“Dear lord,” were the only words that escaped his mouth at the sight sprawled out before him.
Ziggie forced himself to push past the shock and light-headedness he felt so he could pull his cell phone out of his coat pocket. He then began dialing 9-1-1 as fast as he could.
***
Donovan Jakes quietly extricated himself from the Institute’s incognito battle van the second he realized his first three metahuman agents had been knocked into oblivion by Light-Lord. The soldier was immediately followed by Sasheen Kahn and Brett Silver. They each brandished their wireless hyper-tasers and began approaching their target from behind with practiced stealth.
“This is not gonna be fun, boss,” Brett said quietly. “Look at what he did to our three metahumans in like, what, seven minutes?”
“If you think this job is supposed to be fun, then you seriously need to quit and secure work at the post office, Agent Marks,” Donovan replied. “But this time we’re just going to act as back-up for our next big deterrent and hope he’s up to this.”
“Our next big deterrent?” Brett queried. “Do you mean…?”
“Yup,” Donovan said. “That’s exactly who I mean.”
Light-Lord finally reached the courtyard leading to the small school he had selected to vent his wrath upon. Since most of the students decided not to heed the vice principal’s order to depart in an orderly fashion, they were still pouring out of each exit in confused and panic-stricken groups, frequently getting in each other’s’ way in the process. The remaining staff and security guards were unable to control or calm them sufficiently enough to secure a more systematic mass departure.
“Hah!” the scientist-turned-mad-demi-god said aloud with a sadistic smirk. He raised his arms and concentrated on building up the seething pools of energy that he planned to unleash on the crowd and building before him. “How delightfully easy this will be! It will be like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“No, it won’t,” said a youngish male voice from somewhere out of view.
Light-Lord turned to see a monochrome garbed figure step from the side of the fenced area in front of the school and directly into his path.
“If you want to lay one iota of energy on those students, then you need to get through me first.”
“Then I shall gladly do that,” Light-Lord confidently rejoined as he raised his arms and summoned coronas of crackling yellow energy around them.
“We’ll see,” the newcomer replied.
The black-and-white suited figure raised his own hands and bluish-hued energy began coruscating around them. This they did in a manner similar to the more colorful but no less potent energies now cascading about the scientist’s gauntlets.
“Hmmm,” Light-Lord said. “This may prove quite interesting. Before we begin, though, would you care to tell me who you happen to be?”
The young newcomer’s exposed lower face took on an expression that combined a grin with a hint of anger before responding.
“I’m Centurion. And I’m the dude that’s going to take you down.”
Chapter 20: When Gods Wage War in Da ‘Hood…
… it sucks being a mortal who lives there!
“I dispensed with those other costumed metahumans who attempted to stand in my way quite readily,” Light-Lord boasted as his gauntlets crackled with arcs of yellow-orange energy.
Centurion stood his ground in a steadfast manner as bluish energy of his own coruscated about his raised fists. The fledgling hero then replied, “That was them. This is me. Know the difference, pollywog.”
“You dare call me something like that!”
“Yup. I most definitely dare.”
Without another word, Light-Lord howled in rage as he let loose with a double-handed beam of pure destructive force directed at his much younger opponent. Centurion responded in kind, and his own double beams intercepted those of his adversary. The atmosphere itself seemed to be burning at the nexus where the opposing beams collided. The intense buzzing sound these conflicting torrents of energy made as they clashed together was horrendously unpleasant for the human ear to behold.
Light-Lord gritted his teeth under his incandescent hood as he mentally commanded the suit to release exponentially greater amounts of Odic energy on multiple wavelengths. Centurion pushed equally hard with his own outage of power; after about thirty seconds, however, he suddenly found himself beginning to buckle under the seeming impasse.
Light-Lord couldn’t help but notice this disparity, which prompted him to make a remark. “So, it would appear the proverbial immovable object to my irresistible force is proving not to be quite so immovable after all.”
The evidence for that boast was not lost on the gradually buckling Centurion. “We’ll see.”
“Hah! It would appear we are beginning to see right now.”
Centurion continued to focus his barrage of energy while refusing to yield. Still, it was rapidly becoming clear that his perseverance may not pay off in the end.
This guy is… powerful. I don’t know if I can overcome him this way, but I can’t give up. The lives of everyone in that school are depending on me. Don’t let this
peckerhead lay you out, Lonero!
The younger combatant was determined to keep up his end of the stalemate for as long as it took the stampeding students behind him to vacate the vicinity. But the heroic effort on his part was not destined to be successful. Centurion soon had to accept that his arms were beginning to become afflicted with a deep burning sensation as Light-Lord’s energy fusillade started seriously overtaking his own energy beams. No amount of denial and stubbornness on his part were going to alter that obvious fact.
Centurion’s realization that he had but seconds remaining before being blasted aside forced him to make a quick decision. Time to change tactics. Like now!
The young champion kept up his rapidly failing assault for another two seconds as a feint. He then quickly dropped to his knees, thus ducking the destructive energies pouring at him, and immediately projected a single beam of azure Odic energy at Light-Lord’s sternum.
The projected beam struck his adversary with sufficient force to knock the former scientist back over fifteen feet. The villain’s unexpected flight ended when he slammed up against one of the fence’s metal posts.
Centurion then released a war cry of enraged determination just before rushing towards Light-Lord with a speed surpassing that of the greatest Olympic athlete. The scientist-turned-cosmic-menace had promptly scrambled back to his feet, but the bolt of energy he took to his upper body had clearly stunned him.
Before Light-Lord could react, Centurion was upon him. He began the more physical assault with a devastating reverse punch to the side of his adversary’s cloaked face. This was followed up with a second punch to the opposite side of his enemy’s jaw. The costumed champion then utilized the unarmed combat training he eagerly received over the past few months to deliver a low spinning front kick to Light-Lord’s solar plexus region.
The trio of superhuman blows clearly had an effect, as Centurion’s adversary buckled back against the fence post and slid to the ground.
“Had enough?” Centurion asked his foe with mock courtesy.
“Hardly, you insipid little brat,” Light-Lord retorted.
Despite being down on his buttocks, the demented scientist manifested and hurled a crackling sphere of violet-colored energy around his fist directly at Centurion. As the stood not even a foot away, the explosive force struck him point blank.
The sheer destructive potency of the energy mine sent the young metahuman hurling over twenty feet into the air, and thirty feet distant. Ultimately, he was thrown all the way over the surrounding fence to land on top of one of the vehicles in the lot. The roof of the car caved in while the window on each side of the doors shattered outwards with the impact.
Centurion himself lay barely moving, while misty smoke wafted from his fallen form as he experienced more pain than he thought possible since his transformation to post-humanity.
“Hah! That is what you get for being foolish enough to underestimate me!” Light-Lord swaggered as he got back to his feet. “Your blows were admittedly painful to endure, but they were nowhere near sufficient to take me down. Not with the way my energies provide a thin but powerful protective field of energy around me.”
The incandescent villain then began stepping closer to his seemingly fallen young foe.
“You need to cease playing at being a demigod when you are nothing more than an idiotic child trying to exceed your actual capabilities. Should you ever stand again, you had best consider following me rather than opposing me. These snotty louts you’re protecting are cruel and inhumane, and they deserve no better than what I am now going to unleash upon them.”
Since he believed his opposition to be fully crushed, Light-Lord looked upon the groups of students who continued rushing out of the school in a stampede. A small number of them proved foolish enough to actually remain in the schoolyard to watch the battle while attempting to record footage of it on their cell phone camcorders. The being once known as Rutger Kaiser grinned maliciously under his neon hood as he realized how easy it would be to inflict massive carnage upon this lot.
Like shooting fish in a barrel. Heh…
***
With an expression of fiendish glee in the hazel eyes hidden beneath his hood’s goggles, the cosmic power-wielding former scientist raised his arms to summon forth the torrents of crackling energy which immediately began encapsulating them.
These sparks of tremendously powerful energies flashed and blinked numerous colors, both familiar and strange to the human eye, as it swirled about his form while alternately drawing upon numerous frequencies of the electromagnetic and ethereal spectrum. He appeared to become an aurora borealis in a distinctly humanoid shape; the indescribable beauty of these constantly shifting energies that whirled and fizzled about his form belied the nightmarish forms of destruction they were capable of wreaking upon human and metahuman alike.
The power of these magnificent and terrible energies now at Rutger Kaiser’s command were fully capable of undoing all that humanity had built over 10,000 years of civilization; of showing the ignorant species he once considered himself a part of as nothing more than what Kerry Livgren of Kansas once described as “dust in the wind.”
The self-christened Light-Lord could not help but revel in what he had become; at what he could now do to an arrogant race that previously had the gall to treat him as if they were the gods and he were the ant to thrash underfoot as they pleased. He would not only meet and surpass their pitiable displays of power, but he would show them how readily he could exceed their knack for cruelty as well.
With these encouraging thoughts in mind, the Lord of the Light concentrated his psychotic will into projecting this power at the throngs of panicking students who scrambled for safety in front of him. The former scientist couldn’t help but notice how much the lot of them reminded him of the haphazard scattering performed by a group of ants whenever he used to sadistically crush a group of them under his shoe as a child. He beamed eagerly under his glowing hood at the death and pure devastation that he was now about to unleash now that his fellow humans were reduced to the status of ant in his presence.
Or which he would have unleashed, if not for the fact that the cosmic-powered villain was suddenly struck in the side of the head by a detached car door that was hurled at him from his left side with great force.
The surprise impact was enough to stagger Light-Lord for a moment. That proved just long enough to allow the once again conscious Centurion to leap in front of the group of students tripping over each other in their hysterical attempts to flee for their very lives; not to mention the smaller group attempting to boldly film the events on their cell phone cams.
“All of you, grow some common sense and get clear!” the young metahuman shouted at them. “I can’t keep you safe if you choose to stand here doing the paparazzi thing!”
Thankfully, the authoritative figure’s warning was heeded, and the would-be digital journalists fled for their lives. The disguised Benny Lonero couldn’t help but notice that the bulk of them were comprised of students who had belittled and even physically abused him in the past. The struggling hero thus fought back a momentary pang of anger and disgust over risking his own person for the sake of theirs. This brief lapse in ethics was successfully sublimated after he quickly reminded himself that taking such indiscriminate risks is precisely what heroes are supposed to do.
Centurion then turned back to his now recovered, and clearly very irate, antagonist. “So, Mr. Christmas Tree Man, where were we?”
“I recognized the look you emoted when you told those fools to flee the area,” Light-Lord said in an almost gentle tone of voice. “It was the same expression I had whenever I looked at the peers who hurt me all of my life. You are like me. Or rather, you were like me, before one of the Warp Events obviously blessed you with something akin to godhood.
“Yet you protect these imbeciles who treated you like less than the dirty particles they walk over with each step. In the process, you raise hands against one who should be a
kindred spirit in many ways, making an enemy of me instead. And all to spare those pieces of walking refuse their just comeuppance. Why?”
The young champion-in-the-making sought a feasible answer from within his heart and was relieved when he promptly found one to respond with.
“Because using these advantages granted to us by Fate to become worse than the worst of them is the easy way. The pain we suffered at their hands does not give us the right to wantonly inflict harm on others, or to take revenge on the world. Change the world for the better, maybe? Yes. But seeking revenge will not accomplish that; it will only make the world worse, and us worse along with it. And to put it more simply: it’s just flat-out wrong.”
The sizzling cascade of energy waves that sizzled about Light-Lord began increasing in their intensity, the air molecules themselves bursting under the force they represented. Clearly the former scientist’s state of mind influenced how much power the suit emitted every bit as much as his conscious will. Centurion immediately realized that things were about to get uglier than a human face covered brow to mouth with third degree burns.
“You dare pontificate such naïve platitudes to me! They hated us enough to ensure that we would eventually come to hate them back! They used their own advantages against us to satisfy their own lust for popularity and social power! And now you want to defend the likes of them?
“Listen to me, so we do not misdirect our anger at each other: The vipers in human clothes you’re now risking all to defend have always fancied themselves better than us. Well, now we have surpassed them in every conceivable way!”
“Every way… except morality and wisdom. The two factors that count the most.”
“I said listen to me, damn you! Fate upended the status quo in our favor, and it was clearly done for a reason. Can’t you see what that reason is? It was so we could enact just retribution upon them. Not only for us, but for the numerous similar people out there who suffer in the same manner!”
Centurion- Dark Genesis Page 24