Fusion

23. A World's Wager

I crumple the dust underneath my worn sneakers and stare evil directly in the face. Purge smiles, still holding his grip on Violet, waiting to kill her. And then me. I start first, running headstrong towards him. He fires a thin laser from his finger and I lean to the left on my way to him, the blast barely missing me. I ball my fist and punch him in the face. He stumbles back from the punch, shakes his head, and moves his jaw side to side. He puts his hand up and feels the spot where I hit his cheek.

"Now that right there is a man's punch." He smiles and then quickly slugs me in the stomach. The force knocks the wind out of me before he grabs his hand and places it on my chest. His hand becomes icy and begins turning light blue. Frost slowly crawls across my chest from his hand and ice starts to cover my upper body. My body heat begins to chill as I become a living icicle. As he freezes me I release a burst of flames from myself and knock him back.

He flies towards me and blasts a bolt of crimson electricity towards me. It hits me and I am knocked through a window pane and into the lobby of a building. The glass shatters like a gate broken by a ram. I tumble across the floor and stand up as Purge steps through the broken window hole and looks at me.

"You ready to die yet?" He says, standing in place and crunching broken glass underneath his boot.

"Not even close," I reply before vaulting a light spear towards him. My powers are on and off, dwindling as he continues to fight me. The spear sticks in his chest and he pulls it out before crushing it into white dust. The flakes of energy fall to the ground and fade away at his feet. "You know. I'm surprised you were able to kill Chase back there."
He then blasts a wave of sound in my direction and it knocks me back through the front desk. Wood breaks and flies everywhere and I scramble to my feet before throwing the remainder of the desk at him.

"Not because I didn't think you were man enough to kill him or anything. Even though I didn't. I was really surprised on how you didn't get your-" His sentence is cut off by the desk slamming into him, but he turns his body into solid metal before impact and he only stumbles back a few feet. "What I'm saying is, I'm shocked that he didn't kill you." Purge then shifts the gravity all around us and things start to float up into the air. My feet leave the ground against my will and I try to fly towards him. He then quickly releases his grip on gravity and everything slams into the ground. Including me.

"Seeing as every time I touch you your powers dampen." He then brings up two dark shadows behind him and lunges what looks like long spikes of darkness at me. I teleport out the way and behind him. He backhands me as I reappear and I fly through the elevator doors and into the elevator. He flies into me and rams me against the wall, creating a dent in the elevator. "See when I took a few your friend Pitch's powers, I gained his ability to dampen powers while draining life and energy at the same time." I punch him in the face and he slams into the wall before pressing the button labeled "30" on the wall."

"Going up?" He says to me before kicking me into the wall. "So where was I?" He scrunches his face with confusion. I rip the leaning bar off the wall and swing it at his head. He ducks and springs himself back up. "Oh yes, now I remember." The elevator revs up and continues to move, making a "ding" sound every time we pass a floor. I swing the bar again, but miss and hit the wall.

"So whereas I would regularly absorb a normal person's lifeforce-" I drop the bar and tackle him into the wall, almost breaking through the elevator. He recoils and blasts me back with energy. I hit the wall with a thud and fall to the ground, bruised and bloody as always. "-I dampen a powered person's powers while also absorbing their lifeforce. Thus what I'll do to Violet if you fail." I stand up and try and punch him, but he catches it and begins to absorb my power. He then grabs my neck and lifts me up into the air.