Average Joe (2018)

52

I didn't have much time to think. Everdale glided towards me, red electricity crackling around him, with terrifying speed. I flew to the left, Everdale speeding past me. How was I supposed to win this? Everdale was right about one thing - he was stronger now, and my abilities still weren't at one hundred percent.

I could feel him slowly seeping my abilities from me, a deep ache in the back of my skull. He must've taken the serum. Now, he's sapping the abilities of everyone in the city. If he keeps going, he'll kill them.

"Give it up, Norman," Everdale called to me. "You're not Red Flame. You're not Cold Front. You're nothing!"

I soared towards him, crashing into him with the force of a car collision. Red and blue electricity sparked off us and burst outward in a purple wave of light and energy, burning and consuming everything in its path. As we flew eastward, higher above the buildings, our embrace did not cease.

"Are you so weak inside that you need to take everyone else's power to feel complete?" I yelled at him. Everdale gripped me tightly and spun as we flew, shaking me off him and throwing me upwards into the clouds, which were now being lit up with flashes of red and blue electricity. Everdale quickly followed.

"And what of you, Norman Knight?" Everdale spat, rising to meet me. "You've judged your parents your whole life for living a life beyond you. Now, you have their power. You understand why they are the way they are. Power is all it comes down to! Power is what you seek, power to overcome the worthless feeling inside you, the feeling of your parents choosing the fight over you. The feeling that you aren't enough for her." Everdale gestured to the ground below where we had left my friends... where we had left Tori.

"That's not true!" I exclaimed. I could feel his power rising, more and more of my power seeping from me and into him. "I don't need power as you do. I'm fine on my own?"

Everdale laughed.

"Are you, Norman?" Everdale threw a red bolt of lighting, larger than anything I could produce. It crashed into me and while the electricity itself was absorbed by my own, the force of the collision threw me backward, through the clouds, my skin becoming moist with the touch of the fluffy white splotches in the sky. "Norman Knight is nothing more than a worthless bastard! I knew it the moment I looked into your eyes, Norman! My father regarded me as the same - nothing. He viewed me the way your parents view you! Not worth their damn time!"

My chest burned. Anger writhed inside of me. I let out a wail of anguish as I turned and flew back towards Everdale, lightning crackling off me in wide arcs. Everdale's smirk slowly dropped as my fist crashed against his nose, thunder pounding the sky at the very same moment.

"We are nothing alike!" Everdale grunted as he drifted backward from the force of the hit. He regained his composure and growled at me, the blood on his lips matching the neon red of his eyes.

"Ha! Maybe you're right... but you're certainly like them, yes? Ted Knight and Sabrina Miller..."

"Wrong again, asswipe!" I flew forward and once more, crashed against him, our combined energy sparking off in purple waves, making powerful volts of energy, announcing themselves with the deep roll of thunder.

I felt the tendrils of his powers slowly seep from my mind, but his eyes only glowed brighter and as we rolled together through the lightning-streaked clouds, he let out a soft moan as if more power was being added to his own. The fight was keeping him away from my power, but he was still absorbing the power of the other New Yorkers, something that was evident to me when flakes of snow began to twirl through the sky.

Everdale let out a blast of power, red electricity, bolts of fire, and daggers of ice all spiraling off him in waves. The electricity merely passed through me, through a bolt of fire that caught me in the chest as ice daggers stabbed and sliced at my arms and legs, leaving frostbite in their wake. I lost my balance and began to fall through the clouds and the snow and the lightning and down towards the earth.

My vision blurred and began to blacken. Words swirled in my mind... Worthless bastard... Don't be a giant...

Don't be a giant. Don't be a god...

As I fell towards an electrical grid, my descent slowed almost to a halt. Red and blue lightning struck the metal towers and wires around me, overloading them with bright arcs of electricity. Overloading.

An image came to me... At Shadow Global, Everdale draining my power from me, looking tired...

There was a flash and suddenly Everdale was in front of me... I couldn't move... I was still falling, but slowly, almost as if I was in Tori's time field... because I was. Tori, Cora, Mom, Dad, their powers, and the powers of every other New Yorker were becoming his...

"This is the part where I kill you, Norman," Everdale told me. "I'm afraid your fears were correct." Everdale was right... power is the answer... I could feel it, sparking inside me... I knew what I had to do. "You, Norman Knight," he spoke softly as his tendrils of power reached inside me and began to drain me dry. "Are completely and totally average." I smiled. I found the spark inside... and set it free.

"Do I look average to you, Matt?" Electricity pulsated through the metal and wires around us and began to increase.

Everdale smiled in victory... he was draining me dry... but slowly. I pulsated at hard as I could and unleashed the spark, my eyes burning bright, blue and white electricity sparking out from me, crashing against Everdale, being absorbed by him. His smile left his mouth. The time field around me slowly died, as I now floated of my own accord.

"What are you...!" Sweat greased his brow and his eyes stopped glowing... the blue electricity overcoming the red. "What are you doing?"

"I'm doing what you wanted," I told him. "Giving you my power... all of it, all at once." Lighting crackled and crashed around us as the metal of the towers melted and the wires burst apart.

"Don't!" He screamed. "Stop! Agh, it's... too much!" His skin began to peel and crack, purple waves of light peeking through them. "You can't be doing this!" He exclaimed. I felt my power leaving me. I felt my eyes droop as I gave my energy, my life force, everything, to him. "You're just... you're just..."

"I'll tell you what I am," I grinned as my insides became scorched with power, the power that ran through my mother's veins, my father's veins, the power that ran through me. "I'm not a giant. I'm not a god. I'm Norman Knight." And with that, I pulsed one more time, giving the Chronicle, this killer, this madman with Daddy issues, all I had, all I ever was, before the world evaporated into a painful white.