The Undoing Of Villains | ✓

thirty three

My other hand, directing the wall, shook harder as the mass of the rubble slammed into its surface. The huge heap of what had previously been the walkway made its impact hard enough for the wall to bow and bend. Its weight felt as if it transferred to me, my mind bending, snapping, under the pressure, and a pain unlike any other cascaded across my body, clenching a hard fist around my heart as its beating abruptly slowed. 

I was suspended in mid-air, bright rivers of red power flaring out from either hand, but as that beating slowed, so did the vivid color of that light. The forces which had held me suspended in mid-air were quickly dimming, the physical exertion creeping up on me as a sudden numbness sliced through the steely concentration of my mind. The red sphere which had protected Xandra and Tetra gradually disappeared, almost melting away to reveal a smoking hole in the ground, where they both lay scattered – seemingly unharmed. Relatively so. 

Forcing my other palm to move despite me not feeling my arm, I directed it to the wall, still buckling under the weight of the rubble, suspended directly above us. I clenched my teeth, and with a scream that made my already sore vocal chords cry tears of blood I pushed my hand upwards. 

The wall folded on itself, then shot away from us, the rubble in its grasp. I'd only managed to push it away around a dozen feet, but all that remained to rain down on us was rubble and dust. The ground shook as the remains of the walkway fell to the ground, dirt shuddering and scattering as they came to a sudden stop.

The numbness was still spreading, and so I let my arms fall. With that, I crashed into the ground, unable to even move my head. My face was half smashed into the dirt, half turned to the horizon, where the lights of Dynamo glimmered, as if nothing had happened. To them, nothing had happened. I had succeeded.

With a mouth half filled of dirt, four limbs I barely could feel and blood running in rivulets across my face, I managed a small, small smile. A victorious smile, as my eyes burned. Not from the dust and rubble, no, but from sentiment. My mind was overloaded, unable to even process the moments which had transpired, but my sense of victory remained intact. The people of Dynamo would walk safe, as Tetra had been stopped. Now, Declan would get her to Python's or whatever government organization's headquarters, and she would be put behind bars. 

Better bars. A less shitty prison than last time, at least.

The lights from Dynamo's skyline was interrupted by the sudden flashing from flying objects. In my painful deliriousness, the thought of extraterrestrials crossed my mind, before the flashing red and blue lights signalled paramedics, or police. Small, whirring shapes crossed the night sky, and the hum of helicopters soon reached my ears as they crossed the Pyrth river quickly, blades slicing evenly to propel them forwards across the shadowy waters. 

A small tear escaped the corner of my eye as I watched the glimmering lights from buildings scatter across the dark surface of the river. The uniform helicopters rushing towards us was something I shoved to the back of my mind, as the numbness continued spreading. I attempted wriggling my fingers to no avail, and instead a sharp pain emanated from my head. Soon the lights turned from sharp to smudged, nothing more than blurry splotches on an old, folded map. 

The previously static skyline now seemed to move, as if it were floating into the river, and with the lights moving, shifting I attempted shaking my head to clear my vision, but it was to no avail. Instead I was rewarded with another sharp burst of pain, one I wanted to groaned at, but I couldn't. I felt as if the air was slowly squeezed from my lungs, one molecule at a time, and my body attempted to convulse in a desperate attempt to breathe, but I remained frozen. Instead my mouth dropped open, head spasming as it slammed into the dirty over and over and over again, sharp rocks digging into my skull, ripping into skin.