Centurion cringed upon hearing those words.
“I… used to think like you, dude. But the only way we can really be better than them is to avoid acting like them. I agree we were guided by higher forces to gain these powers for a reason. I agree this reason was likely to help dispense justice in the world. But what you’re doing isn’t justice, it’s simple cold-blooded revenge. I’ve been there, and it cost me a part of my soul. You have to stop this before it does the same to you.”
Light-Lord put his head down for just a second. “It’s… too late for that now, my young friend. I’ve already killed this day. And after all I’ve been through for 46 years, I couldn’t help feeling good about it. It wasn’t soul-destroying to me; rather, it was invigorating.”
Centurion clenched one of his fists and gritted his teeth. Oh, man… this could have been me. This was almost me! No, that was me two months ago for a minute. All the hatred, all the insanity, flowing from him like lava spewing from an erupting volcano… and that could have been me. It could still be me in the future if I fail to gain control over all of my remaining baggage.
The young metahuman held out his right hand in a non-hostile, conciliatory manner.
“Look, this has to stop. I know first-hand how much you’re hurting, and what such anger can do to someone. But you don’t have to give in. I came back from this, and that means you can too. Let me help you, man. Like it or not, we have an enormous responsibility to the world now. And...”
“I read that comic book story too, you idiot! But unlike you, I always saw it for the naïve sentimental nonsense that it was! How many people with power, from the hallways of a school all the way up to the corporate board rooms and to the Oval Office itself, have ever done anything less than whatever they wanted to do? And to whomever they wanted to do it to? Do not play the fool!”
“Maybe they are the fools! Maybe it’s important for us to show them that power has to be used for the world, not to subjugate it for one’s personal benefit.”
Light-Lord angrily released a beam of violet-hued energy at the fence a few feet to the side of him; an act which melted the criss-crossing strings of metal like wax. That time, thankfully, it was solely to vent, and nothing more. But that was obviously not going to last.
It was then that the scientist-turned-demi-god made an impassioned request of Centurion.
“I am asking you—pleading with you, even—not to raise arms against one who could be like family to you. Join me, and we can inspire others like us who emerge in the wake of the Warp Events to link up with us. We can now be the true alphas of this world, the apex of power; not the pathetic omegas we used to be, those who are crushed under the feet of the conventional alphas. The mundane alphas will now bow before us, the new breed of alpha in their midst. The meek have become the mighty, and the old guard has been dethroned.”
Centurion clenched his fist again, and bluish arcs of energy began sparking around it. Geez, listen to this guy! His mind is unwrapping faster than a roll of toilet paper on a bad shit day. I need to do something, and fast. As crazy as he sounds, his babbling is making too much sense to me. I can’t help empathizing with him. I… can’t listen to him anymore. I need to shut him up.
Centurion closed his eyes tightly for a moment, as if fighting conflicting feelings and loyalties in his still battered psyche. The adolescent metahuman had to concede that he did identify with the tormented being of power who was fast descending into a psychotic breakdown before him. He could not deny this.
The pain and memories of the events that nearly drove him into the same dark chasm; the collage of hateful faces and the words they spewed at him like spurts of corrosive acid… all began cascading through his mind’s eye like flood waters from a burst dam. The young hero found himself wanting to show sympathy and even loyalty to the incandescent man-god before him.
Centurion suddenly realized that he once again found himself at the threshold of two pivotal choices: one that his heart and mind wanted to make in an almost instinctual fashion; and the right one. The youth now realized why doing the right thing was so often the hardest choice of all. He had already learned in no uncertain terms how welcoming the road to Hell can be.
Hence, the young man’s voice was heavy with emotion when he answered a few seconds later. “I… can’t join with you, Light-Lord. It would make me one of the ultimate bullies in the world. What they did to me… to us… I just can’t do to others with no fear of consequence. It would be wrong. We have to fight these temptations, alright? Now, please back down. Or, with all due respect, I’m going to stomp your face into the ground until you do.”
The inner pain, disappointment, and feelings of betrayal flared from Light-Lord with an intensity that rivaled the energies he expelled from his suit like a thousand exploding neon lights. In fact, the rage and the phosphorescent candela seemed to symbiotically feed off each other as readily as a couple of mutually enabling drug addicts.
Not only was Centurion himself actually forced to avert his eyes from the severity of that glare, but the surge was excruciatingly painful to any psychic who was present throughout Western New York.
Back at the Queen City branch of the Valis Institute, Agent Claire Boone jumped up from a deep sleep and screamed in horror. The intensity of the nightmare she had just experienced was matched only by the brutality of the waking migraine that made every blood vessel in her cranium feel as if they were about to burst.
***
“You treasonous little piss pot!” Light-Lord screamed. “You’ll pay with all the rest for this treachery!”
“The quality of your insults make me suffer enough as it is, dude,” Centurion uttered sardonically.
Now beyond the point of frenzy, Light-Lord focused his will into his Odic energy-channeling suit that he wore like a prized suit of armor. This time he used that energy to form a basketball-sized sphere of sizzling plasma that flickered in his right palm like a hundred roman candles. Centurion raised his own energy-flaring hands and braced for what he knew would be a powerful assault.
As it turned out, however, the presumed intentions of Light-Lord were merely a ploy on his part. The plasma ball wasn’t intended for Centurion.
Instead, Light-Lord hurled the bright white plasmic sphere far over his opponent’s head, towards a portion of the brick roof which extended over another group of fleeing students. And the younger combatant could plainly see that one of them was Carolyn Marsden, the young lady whom he cared about more than he dared admit to himself.
“No!” the rookie champion shouted as he rushed towards the group of imperiled students as fast as his superhumanly enhanced leg muscles could muster.
Nevertheless, the hurled plasma ball had too much of a head start, and it sizzled through the air like a rogue comet towards its intended target. The brick enclosure was struck as intended, which caused the entire structure to be blown clear off the roof. The several ton mass of dislodged masonry began falling downwards towards the hapless Carolyn, who had been driven to her knees by the ear-splitting explosion of the energy sphere’s impact.
Carolyn screamed in terror as she saw certain death falling upon her from above. She spent her final seconds praying to God for divine intervention.
He may possibly have answered her devout plea, for a sleek monochrome-attired figure leapt over her a mere second before the enclosure reached the point on the ground where gravity was pulling it. Centurion was barely able to brace his arched back over the girl of his dreams in time to blunt the impact of the huge brick structure.
The limits of his superhuman strength were sorely tested as he felt what must have been one of his vertebrae dislocated from his spine. Despite the agony, he focused all his will and determination into one mighty heave of his enhanced arms to hurl the structure off of him. It tumbled to the ground a few feet away with a loud smash.
Centurion then fell to his knees as the pain of his injured back overtook him. He hit the ground beside the girl whose fragile mortal life
he had just prolonged. Carolyn was clearly in a mild state of shock, but she could see the masked visage of her savior through slightly blurred vision.
“Are… are you an angel?” she asked in her sweet voice.
“No. But in my view, I just saved the life of one,” was his response.
Damn it, that was sappier than a crushed mustard seed, dude. I hope she was in too much shock to actually hear it. But thank the gods I was in time to save her. Now I pray to Odin or whichever deity is behind the Odic force empowering me that my cosmic energies will heal whatever happened to my back. And I mean within seconds, otherwise I just bought Carolyn a very short reprieve.
The still injured Centurion painfully turned his head to see that Light-Lord had aimed his flaring gauntlets in the direction where there stood both the fallen metahuman and the girl under his protection. The cosmic-powered villain was in the process of building a truly enormous surge of energy which he obviously intended to release directly at them.
The monochrome-attired adolescent didn’t know if his superhumanly resilient body was sufficient to shield Carolyn from the coming onslaught. And even if it did, he knew his injured state would be exacerbated to the point that he would be truly taken out of the fight.
Would Donovan’s small Mega-Force unit of soldiers be sufficient to save these students if he fell? I need to concentrate my energies into consciously healing my back. And I need to do it yesterday!
Centurion focused all of his potent energies inwards, rather than outwards as beams of visible energy. He did so on a creative hunch that both his life and that of Carolyn depended on being successfully carried out.
Within a matter of seconds, the young hero felt the familiar tingle of the energies he summoned being concentrated in the area of his spine, like an etheric Kundalini serpent slithering directly off a Caduceus wand. He literally felt whatever had been knocked out of alignment from his spinal cord being directed back into its proper place by these arcane energies that traveled through his internal organs like water forced out of a spigot. All pain in the area appeared nullified as his potentially debilitating injuries were consciously healed far quicker than they normally would have.
The feeling of triumph and elation that accompanied the success of this act was nothing less than palpable. Yes! I did it! Thank you, freakin’ Odin or whoever!
The monochrome-costumed youth had not even a split second to self-boast over this amazing new use of his power, however. Because no sooner did Centurion render himself able to stand and walk again than Light-Lord had fully unleashed a mauve-colored beam of destructive force in his and Carolyn’s direction. The teen metahuman leaped to his feet in a blur of motion and extended his arms while focusing all his will into blocking the oncoming shaft of glowing devastation.
Much to Centurion’s utter astonishment, this instinctual response did not result in countering beams of sapphire-colored energy, as before. While his hands did indeed light up in a thin corona of azure luminescence, this time no shafts of energy were fired from them.
Instead, nothing but a dim bluish glow surrounded the air in a wide rectangular space before him. When Light-Lord’s beam struck this glowing wall of atmosphere, however, the energy barraged was abruptly halted. The stream of energy rippled about a few feet short of its intended targets as if it struck an invisible solid object.
This lightly glowing field projected by Centurion effectively blocked his enemy’s beam, but the sheer force of impact seemed to be partially transferred directly to the young defender nevertheless. As a result, his body was thrown back several feet up against one of the school’s brick walls.
“What in the hell?” Light-Lord pondered aloud. “You can use your Odic force to fuse the surrounding air molecules together to create an effective ‘force field?’ Not even I have been able to utilize my suit’s energies to accomplish a comparable feat.”
Less than a moment later, the ex-scientist suddenly found himself pummeled from a distance of four meters, the impact of which caught him off guard knocked him off his feet. This blow was courtesy of a ruby-colored beam of pure concussive force projected from Centurion’s eyes, which he managed to do while still on the ground.
“Ha! That’s what you get for allowing yourself to get distracted by my impressiveness, guy!”
But how did I manage to fuse those air molecules into a force shield? That seems like yet another of the interesting ways I suddenly “figured out” how to use these energies when I happened to be under some serious duress. Not to mention how manifesting the energy as pure force is still something I need to get used to. And why is it that the force beams project out of my eyes instead of my hands, like the blue disintegrator-type of energy does? It really sort of freaks me out when it projects out of my eyes like that.
Still, I can’t let that stop me from practicing how to do it, since it really comes in handy at times. And I’m rambling to myself again, probably because I’m so nervous. I need to calm down and focus.
Once Carolyn saw Light-Lord knocked off his feet and apparently stunned, she quickly pooled her will into forcing herself out of her state of shock and getting back onto her feet. Despite the girl’s strong inclination to take advantage of the seeming divine intervention that had saved her life, she found herself unable to do so without first seeing to the welfare of her strange savior. The young woman thus ran up to Centurion just as he painfully stood once again.
“You’re Centurion, right? I saw reports of you on the news.”
“Yeah, that would be me. I’m flattered that you didn’t mistake me for one of the janitors.”
The girl almost smiled, despite the situation. “Thank you for saving me. That was amazing. Scary as all hell, but… amazing.”
“It was worth every risk.”
With that stated, the young metahuman suddenly exhibited a surprising burst of confidence by wrapping his arms around the girl and planting a deep kiss upon Carolyn’s lips.
The expression on her face was one of complete astonishment.
“Omg,” she whispered aloud.
The incognito Benny Lonero knew this wasn’t the time to continue along those lines, no matter how much he wanted to… almost more than saving the world, in fact.
“Yeah, I know,” he replied. “Awesome, huh? But you have to go now! I need to deal with this. So, later, okay?”
The surprised girl simply nodded her head and ran towards the western exit to the schoolyard. She did so just as Light-Lord was back on his feet once again. The protective field around his suit again enabled him to withstand massive amounts of force without sustaining serious injury.
Centurion was determined to put the heat on Light-Lord to cover Carolyn’s escape, along with that of the few students and staff who were still in the process of evacuating the grounds.
To that end, he immediately pointed his arms and projected beams of force at his opponent. They struck their intended target dead center and sent the cosmic-powered villain skidding backwards several feet. But this time he remained standing.
“Is that your best, you treasonous little fool? If it is, then your worst must be truly pathetic!”
“Maybe I just don’t think you’re worthy of my best, huh?”
Light-Lord shrieked in fury at the insult and unleashed another pair of energy beams at Centurion, these ones flaring with an incandescent green. The young hero’s reaction time proved on the mark as he leapt and somersaulted several meters through the air to evade the beams rather than attempting to counter them via another force field. Especially since he still had no idea how to consciously manipulate air molecules in that manner.
The young hero was well aware that he needed to practice accomplishing that feat at will, rather than only by seeming instinct when under extreme pressure. But alas, now was not the time for that.
Centurion realized for the moment that he needed to use strategy in addition to pure force against his powerful and unyielding foe. To that end he projected a spherical bolt of crack
ling plasmic force directly at the ground before his adversary’s feet; after all, if the energy-wielding opposition could use plasma “mines,” then so could he.
As hoped for, the spherical bluish-white mass of energy exploded like a cluster of TNT the moment it landed on the concrete a mere few inches from the target’s feet. Though Light-Lord’s suit possessed an auric shield that took the brunt of even this blast, he was still stunned enough to be knocked off-balance.
In addition to that, he was simultaneously pelted by the many rocky shards of concrete shrapnel that bombarded his inch-thick energy force field in every direction. That was sufficient to stun him even further, albeit still not quite enough to send him to the ground.
Centurion took full advantage of his foe’s momentary disorientation to charge at his opponent. He slammed into the master of light as hard as he could with an ersatz football-style tackle (he duplicated the move as best he could based on the limited number of times he actually watched the sport performed on television or online). Light-Lord was sent flying backwards several yards by the superhuman force of this full body blow, stopping only when he slammed against the intact portion of the yard’s steel fence.
Centurion followed up by quickly stunning his adversary yet again with another bolt of electromagnetic force projected from the fingertips of his right hand. This one struck Light-Lord directly in the face. Before the ex-scientist could recover, the young metahuman was upon him unleashing a series of punches to his hooded face, hoping to inflict maximum damage upon the god-like villain.
Light-Lord was clearly under painful siege from the ruthless salvo of superhuman blows. However, just as it seemed he would go down at last, a fit of sheer desperation enabled the cosmically empowered man to cybernetically command the suit to release a tremendous omnidirectional expulsion of energy.
Centurion- Dark Genesis Page 25