Rise || Marvel

《42》Don't Do This With Your Siblings, Kids

《 Tia's POV 》

"What do you want from us?"

"I just want to talk!"

"You have a funny way of showing it."

"I'm not exactly socially inept," Shady Dude grumbled to himself, then raised his voice to address me, "I need you to come with me."

Peeking out from behind my little hiding spot behind a support beam, I narrowed my eyes suspiciously, "Where? Dad said not to go with strangers."

Shady Dude seemed to hesitate, then said, "It's not technically on Earth... And it's a pile of smoke and rubble right now, but..."

"That sounds really sketchy..." I edged back behind the support beam awkwardly.

"Then I have to resort to desperate measures!" He groaned loudly.

I dodged another blast of dark wind. My idea of 'dodging' was practically doing an Irish Jig in an attempt to avoid all the shadowy stuff Shady Dude was hurling at me, so yeah, everything's great! I ducked, then teleported behind him furiously. He seemed taken aback, as if he'd forgotten that I could do that. As a result of this temporary ignorance, I was able to use my combat pole to force him away from the staircase- the further away from Sonia and Harley he was, the better, "Who are you? I'm on the verge of calling you 'J.D.'."

Shady Dude crashed forwards, but used the momentum to flip himself back onto his feet. He crouched at the end of the hallway, before a cracked window frame, dark wind swirling manically around his arms, "'J.D.'...?"

"Heathers reference."

"Des," He murmured after a short pause, "I thought you'd at least remember that much. Now, can we please wrap this up? The apartment I'm renting has a 10 o'clock curfew, and that landlord will whack me with a fly swatter if I'm late."

With that, the wind condensed into a sharp-bladed sword. He lunged towards me.

"Alright, thanks, but RUDE!" I squawked, deflecting the stabbing implement with my staff. I kicked out, knocking my staff into Des's legs before barrel-rolling towards the window at the far end of the corridor.

The male retaliated by sending a cascade of shadowy wind in my direction. I hooked my staff on my belt and flung both my hands up, generating a wave of flames to shield myself from the oncoming surge. The ensuing explosion caused the surrounding walls to disintegrate, only leaving the (probably unstable) scaffolding for us to wobble around on.

Bending my knees slightly for balance, I edged backwards along my scaffolding beam. If 'Des' wanted to come get me, he'd have to risk the unstable beams. Simple as that.

Hmm, now to try stalling.

"I think you may have the wrong person," I called over the roaring wind, "Sorry to disappoint you, but I have no idea who you are!"

He seemed to pause for a moment, thinking hard, then asked, "What about Ar- no, Temi?"

Wait. Surprised, I levelled my staff at Des, "How do you know about that? Are you the reason for the reoccurring Satan dreams?"

There was a bemused pause, filled with the high-pitches whistling of the wind, while Des surveyed me with a look of utter confusion.

"Dreams?" He sounded genuinely puzzled, "What dreams?"

I'm so confused.

That's when Sonia came hurtling out of nowhere, wielding a short length of conduit pipe, and smacked Des upside the head (of course, she profusely apologised right afterward, but didn't drop the conduit).

Torn between laughter and shock, I couldn't formulate a proper sentence for a good several seconds, "Sonia- I- Pft..."

"Ow..." Des groaned indignantly, rubbing the point of impact, then addressed me with an accusing tone, "I thought you would have told your friends to run!"

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean that they would listen to me," I shot back, poising myself to launch into action if Des made any violent moves towards Sonia.

"Weren't there two of them?" He asked after a long pause of frowning at Sonia.

"HEY," This time, Harley came rocketing through the doorway, brandishing his little bully-propellent device, "Sorry I'm late. I dropped my taser-thing down the stairs."

"I have access multiple conduit pipes and I'm not afraid to hit you again!" Sonia threatened, whipping another length of pipe out from her inner jacket pocket.

"Please, um, don't?" Des suggested uncomfortably, "I'd rather fight fire..."

"That can be arranged if you don't stop wreaking havoc around the city," I piped up, setting my own hand on fire for emphasis. Shooting another disgruntled glance over at Harley and Sonia, Des took a step backwards along the frail scaffolding pole. Rather unfortunately, the slight shift in weight distribution triggered the collapse of all connecting scaffold structures.

With a quick flash of fire (and an unnaturally high-pitched yelp), I fwoofed over to the opposite end of the rapidly deteriorating beam- the end closest to safely solid brick ground. Sonia was rapid-fire muttering in Korean, dropping her conduit pipe weapons, but Harley jerked forward and grabbed my hand to pull me away from the twisting scaffold.

Like an idiot, I hadn't account for consequences of landing on the- yup, you guessed it- collapsing scaffold beam. Instead, I had been too preoccupied with looking around to see what Des was doing, and didn't notice my perch twisting downwards. It also generated that horrible 'metal-on-metal' sound (a sound which is probably hated universally at this point).

"Thanks..." I smiled sheepishly.

"What happened to the other guy?" Sonia piped up hesitantly, starting forward towards the edge of the newly created balcony.

"Careful...!" I warned her, peering as best I could over the edge, "Please don't fall..."

"She's a lot more careful than you, no offense," Harley mumbled, "The amount of second-hand stress I'm experiencing right now..."

Making a disgruntled 'humph' noise in response, I surveyed the collapsed scaffolding beams clustered on the deserted backstreet, twirling trails of dust expanding out from the rubble hazily.

"He's gone," I said, frowning in frustration, "Again."

"Well, maybe you'll run into him again someday," Harley snorted, "You know what they say- third time's the charm!"

"I'd rather not, thanks."

There was an awkward silence, in which all that could be heard was the increased whistling of the breeze, and the gentle 'tap-tap' of miniscule slivers of wooden and concrete debris toppling to the street below.

"I think I wanna go home now..." Sonia coughed lightly.

Yawning, I tugged my sleeves down over my lower arms, "Right, I gotta find a phone to call Tony and pester him until he agrees to donate resources to rebuilding this place..."

-
You can tell I've rushed the ending of this chapter (because it's *inhale* T R A S H) Sorry for the lack of updates lately- assignments are to blame (mainly, in any case... the other factor is that I wanted to completely re-write this chapter to better fit the story and it was giving me severe writer's block vibes).

Anywho, updates will go on as normal from now on! Thanks for reading!