Avatar Rose: Dusk

Ch.78: I'm in Hell

I lose control.

In Nathan's head, the scene went on replay. A machine gun on the roof, the bullets tearing Evan's clothes to shreds. An un popped grenade flying through the air, plopping to the ground with an unsettling crack. That unsettling plop to the concrete ground was what caught his attention.

What little remained of Evan's body lay mangled, unidentifiable swimming in a pool of deathly scarlet on the ground. The dying boy looked left and right, his eyes settling on his brother before giving a little smirk. His trembling fingers stopped trembling, and a gun, fully loaded, dropped from his hand. The boy could tremble no longer.

Nathan screamed, his mouth baring teeth like a lion. He gripped everyone he could and charged forward to his brother when he was hit by a burst of wind and blinded by a powerful blue light. Nathan was thrown across the room upon impact, his back smashing into a wall. His watering eyes found Rose, who was flying in the air, surrounded by a sphere of high current. A flash of red hair darted from a battle and immediately cradled the dead bounty hunter's body, pressing her lips to the cold corpse, staining her mouth red with blood. She screamed something vile, but it was lost over the power of wind. The brief moment was almost like zen, for every human being, for a second, seemed to stop moving. A crash at the door puts everyone to tension.

"HAHAHAHAAA! PUPPET KILLER IS DEAD!!!"

Rose gains power at a monstrous rate, crashing through the ceiling. Making the entire building shake in awe, and the sky begins to rain metal. A wave of liquid metal swarms the entire ground and a third party rushes into fight. To his left, Xander smashes the skull of a bounty hunter in with his battle hammer. His eyes are rabid. Gwen comes from behind and somersaults off of his shoulders, coating the ground with water, freezing it over to stop the liquid metal from spreading. A tear escapes her eye and runs down sorrowfully down her cheek.

Crimson Shower gives her a crazed look, licking her lips as she salivates over the freshness of her prey. "Water girl!" She yells over the power of wind. "I'll bring you to hell myself!"

The light flickers off, and the sky opens. Rose isn't even moving anymore. Blood trickles down her prosthetic leg and the sight is ghastly, as her crimson swims, pulled by gravity down the labyrinth of grooves and hitches that is her metal leg. She had taken a bullet. Fire swirls around her in intricate patterns, artfully setting bounty hunters and honoured warriors aflame in a deathly dance of beauty. Gwen waltzes around Crimson Shower, streams of water knitting in strategic mazes and the ground itself rises as the metalbender puts up a skillful defence. The ceiling crashes down while the floor fights its way up. Heaven and Hell meet in the middle.

Gwen's icicle skewers plainly through Crimson Shower's chest and Rose's vortex of wind is suddenly charged through with electricity and sparkles with a snakelike intensity.

The soldiers fight mostly against the bounty hunters now, but still, Team Rose is severely outnumbered. Fourteen soldiers with big rifles surround young Liesel, who's still clutching onto her lover's body. Her eyes are void and empty, her lips and hands crusted with blood. She gets to her feet and simply flops her hands up. She's tackled to the ground and bound, someone sitting on her neck, making the girl choke down on her own vomit.

Rowan and Xander fight off people back-to-back. Rowan had somehow acquired a gun, and now he rains bullets upon the soldiers with a rage so unsuited to his character. Xander sneaks behind soldiers taking shelter behind earth-bent walls and smashes in their skulls in a series of sickening thuds. With a bunch of his ribs broken, Nathan is rather restricted, but he surrounds himself in water and does the best of making the sniper's veins pop in turn, letting them each sink to their knees as they drown like fish out of water in their own blood.

Rose sparkles like an angel, a firecracker in the sky. Surrounded by lightning and with the seeming power of a god itself, she hover 30 feet above the ground, staring down soldiers below with eyes of blue. Her eyes find Evan's carcass, with Liesel squirming for dear life, forever faithful beside him, and something within her clicks. Her eyes flash purple. And shadow warriors emerge from out of no-where.