Fusion

21. Power Surge

Rubble falls through the air, the wind howls as I fall, and I close my eyes, my impending death inevitable. Reality snaps back into place like a puzzle. I open my eyes and focus on flying. Nothing. I try to shapeshift or even teleport. But it's pointless. Then, Chase flies at me.

"You can fly?!" I yell at him as he tackles me in midair.

"I'm stronger than you'll ever be." He then speeds up and we crash through a skyscraper, him using me as a shield to bust through each and every individual wall. The concrete virtually breaks my back over and over before he flies out the building and smashes me down into the concrete of a street.

I roll across the ground to the feet of a car. Chase comes in at high velocity and the ground cracks and breaks as he lands with the force of a tank. Parts of the road come up from the ground as he lands and he looks at me, waiting to kill. He teleports over to me and I stand up. He tries to punch me, but I duck, missing it by inches. I then try to launch a piece of ice at him with my hand, but nothing happens. He then kicks me in the gut.

I use telekinesis to throw a nearby stop sign at his head. It hits and he flinches. Finally, something works. I dash up to him and tackle him into the side of a taxi. I repeatedly punch him with all my energy, but he then places his hand on my chest and releases a static shock.

I stumble back, and he blasts me in the chest with a red bolt, which sends me flying back from the sheer force. I try to ignore the screaming pain and blast a fireball at him as I stand up again. I quickly ignite my hand and aim, hoping for a lucky shot. I release the fireball towards him. It flies through the air and hits the taxi. It explodes and Chase is thrown a few feet away by the blast but regains his balance. He tries to hit me with another bolt, but I quickly bring a stone wall up from the ground to block it. The charge dissipates as it hits the large rock. Then I launch the slab at Chase. He is struck by it and knocked back into the side of a car. He stands up from the car and picks it up by the tailgate, before swinging it around and throwing it at me. It hits me and explodes on impact, causing me to become burned and knocked back a few feet. I hit the ground and try to reclaim my balance and stand up, my body sore from the intense fight. I slowly heal as the ash rains from above me.

He flies past me and over to a lamppost. He stands in between two of them and quickly absorbs the energy inside them. Red electricity crackles between him and the posts and they spark as their energy is sucked out. Chase's eyes glow red and he walks towards me, past multiple run down cars on the sides of the roads. As he walks past them he slowly absorbs the electricity from them and surges it into himself, building up to his peak of power.

I stand up, bleeding from multiple places, my body bruised and shattered, and the battle soon to be over. I am in tatters from the fight. Cuts, scrapes, bruises, and wounds riddle throughout my body. My blood stains the ruined road and I wince in pain, a few bones broken. I'm not healing as fast as I normally do. In fact, a lot of my powers are completely out of commission at the moment. Which makes no sense.

I throw a fireball at him and it strikes his shoulder. He slightly shakes from the impact and continues towards me, absorbing more and more power. I fire an oblivion ray at him and it explodes on impact with him. He has no reaction. In fact, he barely even feels it. He stops walking and stands still about three feet away from me. He has his hands outward at his side, crackling raw power in his palms, the crimson energy flowing through his body.

"Chase. Don't." I want nothing more than to reason with him and stop the fight.

"Give me one reason to let you live." He responds in a dark tone, quaking with rage.

"Because I have to stop Purge before he swallows up the world and spits out the ruins. Because I have to save us all. Everyone. Including you." I stand there in front of him, my hair slightly waving in the light breeze. My body broken and crippled.

"Not good enough." He pulls his arm back and throws it quickly forward towards me, his hand curled into a fist. It strikes me across the face and I fly through the air. The power of the strike creates a shockwave, busting the windows of buildings all around us, and knocking me into a car, and then onto the concrete, which crumbles as I fall a few feet into it.

My body is almost dead, and I haven't even fought Purge yet. I slowly stand up, my body barely able to function. I lift myself off the ground, my palms on the concrete and my stomach facing it. It's a rocky ride up because at every moment my body wants to give and take a long nap I know I won't wake up from. I finally stand up after a few seconds of struggle. I look around, trying to spot Chase, but he's nowhere to be seen. I finally maintain balance and successfully stand up, clenching my left ribs. I turn around, looking, and waiting for him to show his face. Then in a split second, he arrives. He teleports all around me, punching me from dozens of angles. The pain is hardly endurable. I fall on my knees and cough some blood upon the dirty concrete. I look around, dazed and in excruciating pain.

He charges a bolt of energy in his hand, ready for an execution. He aims it directly at me and fires the bolt, point blank, at my chest. I try to ignore the blast, but the pain practically kills me. I yell in agony and try to stand up. I slowly wipe the blood off my chin and spit on the ground. I'm halfway up when he blasts me again. This time it's even more powerful. That hit stung more than the last. The person I once thought was my "friend" wants nothing more than to end my life. He raises his hand again. Energy flows through his body and he releases it from his right hand.

The blast of crimson red energy hits me directly in the stomach again and I fall to my knees once more while shrieking in pain. "Please..." Blood spills from my mouth onto the cracked pavement and I beg him not to end it for the other's sake.

"I hate you." Slips from his lips before he blasts a straight ray of energy through my chest and I freeze, clenching my heart.

Oh God, that hurt. I hit the ground with a pitiful thud. My life then flashes before my eyes...

All the events in my life recur instantly before me, stunning me. My childhood, my parent's death, me finding my powers, my various fights...Violet. Sweet Violet. The face I'll never see again. This is truly what it feels like to die. And it hurts. I fall onto my back, sear marks all over my chest. I'm not dead yet, but I soon will be. It all ends here. I'm going to die a painful death. The others are going to die just like me, and soon after that, all of humanity who wishes to resist Purge. The world is going to delve deeper into the apocalypse it's already undergoing. And all I can do to help it is lye here and wait to die.

He then holds his hands out towards me as I lay on the ground and releases the last of his absorbed power. The electricity crackles and burns my skin, bouncing from one spot to another, tearing my body. He smiles as I writhe there, yelling in pain, defenseless. He ups his amperage. The electricity intensifies, searing me like cooked meat, and quickly killing me. I struggle, trying to overcome the pain as he continues to murder me.

But I can't die. I can't. If I die, it's all over. No one will be left to stop Purge. I have to live. I have to fight. In an instant, I become more resilient. I begin to steadily ignore Chase's electricity as his power surge fades. I try to absorb the energy he is shooting at me with my body and use it against him. He continues to blast me as I extend my hand to the right. I look that direction, as does he.

He stops electrocuting me for a second, and I use my mind to pick up what I want to. I use telekinesis, one of my last working powers, to pick up a long slender piece of scrap metal. I then, with all the power left in my nearly lifeless body, launch it towards Chase. My heart skips a beat as it strikes him so easily, so quickly, so lethally.

I look up at him as he clenches the long, jagged, metal that is sticking out from both ends of his chest with his battle-worn hands. He looks down at it, startled. A small stream of blood falls from his mouth before he falls over onto the ground and lands on his side.

I stand up, slowly, but surely. I look down at him, as I am still in pain, and I weep. Two tears roll down the sides of my cheeks, wiping away dust and dripping onto the chaos-stricken road. I continue to stare at his corpse.

"I'm sorry, Chase. You were my best friend, and I killed you. I had to. I'm sorry." I turn away from him and step away, wiping my tears with my left hand.