TommyInnit Indirectly Kills God, Once Again

Episode Four: Death is Just Around the Corner

In one, swift, blink-and-you'll miss it movement, Shelby threw the entire water station in front of herself and Tommy, causing the attack's flames to arc around the both of them- just barely close enough to singe the edge of Tommy's backpack.

"NIKI!" Shelby shouted once the fire had cleared. Tommy took the aggression as a sign that he could peek his head out from the non-traditional shield without the risk of his eyeballs melting straight out of his sockets.

The namesake of Shelby's scolding stood around twenty metres away from the opened lift doors, with her bare hands cupped around her mouth in shock. "Shelby! Oh Watchers- are you alright?" Niki asked, concern lacing every single one of her words.

"Well now I am, no thanks to you." The receptionist remarked, her accent thickened with her frustration.

But, just before Tommy was sure Shelby was about to give the fire-wielder a taste of her own medicine, a new face revealed himself from the wider room. "Oh, Good! Shelby! I was just starting to get worried that the kid wasn't going to come. I suppose Dreamwisher will want to start training immediately." the man declared.

"You're... Prometheus and Warden." Tommy stated, having barely recognised the duo in their current state. Prometheus, or perhaps Niki as she presented now, was barren of nearly all of the dramatic drapings, cloak, and dual cape that typically decorated her form. Instead, she wore a tight-fitting black entourage, matched with dark grey cargo pants. Her hair was put up into a short ponytail, and, lacking her signature half-face mask, the space around her eyes was smeared with some sort of black grease paint, drawing interest to her rapidly desaturating amber irises.

Warden, too, had changed out of his overly-armoured suit- but, he still bore many of the man-made mechanisms that he was famous for. A cybernetic contraption, resembling something that might eventually be schemed up in the 2000's, lined both his neck and covered most of his jaw, mimicking - be it intentional or not- resembled an ancient gladiator's jaw guard. Had Tommy not already been familiar with the hero, he might've mistaken the sickly green colour creeping onto his flesh from the metal as the result of an allergy, but he knew better than to assume that the mechanism was doing anything but helping him. Even so, Warden was not excused from pain and trauma. An unhealed scar crossed the bridge of his nose, cutting through his barrage of freckling. His hair was cut short- Tommy got the impression that whatever had caused the disfigurement had also given him an unexpected barber appointment.

"Huh, I guess you aren't as stupid as Archangel let on." Warden claimed, laughing a bit as he leaned onto an oversized warhammer. "Sorry, yes. We are. Though, I suppose you can call me Sam. You won't need to use any of our field names here. We all know who you're talking about, Tommy," he clarified, before continuing further. "Great, now I'm getting sidetracked. Go... uh, to Dreamwisher. Shouldn't keep him waiting any longer!" Sam concluded, ending the one-sided conversation abruptly.

Only when Sam gestured towards the back of the room, towards two sparring figures, did Tommy remember that he, in fact, did not live in the elevator, and finally exited into the broader chamber. Shelby, though, only seemed to have been biding her time, soaking in all the wonderful scents of claustrophobia. Alas, on the command of Sam, she swiftly guided Tommy to Dreamwisher.

The same Dreamwisher who was actively suffocating a god.

Horus' hands were frantically trying to pry Dreamwisher's chokehold, whose grip only tightened: basic physics seemingly disregarding the fact that the two of them were entirely in costume, and that Dreamwisher himself should not have had enough situational awareness to do such an action in the first place, considering that his mask was very much still on.

Then again, they probably should not have been in such a situation in the first place. Heroes usually weren't supposed to kill each other. And when Horus' mono-coloured eyes began to bulge, his inhumanly golden skin began to discolour, and his attempts to convince of yielding seemed nothing more than white noise to his rival, Shelby seemed to share the same thought as Tommy.