JaBrawn

JaBrawn shook the enormous man's hand, noting that Tanner was the stronger between the two of them; a sensation to which he was unaccustomed.

"An honor Tanner, and thank you. My name is JaBrawn. Most call me JB for simplicity's sake, and you are more than welcome to do the same."

Then the other stepped into view. JaBrawn's still very weak senses could not probe the man's thoughts, though his actions bespoke of benevolence, though of a rather gruesome variety.

He stared in mute fascination at the manner in which he cleansed Tanner's massive metal gauntlets of their befoulment.

"Well. Interesting trick."

Tanner then made his very clear request as to the new man's identity. JaBrawn was about to do the same, when his massive savior's focus went from the newcomer to something else altogether.

JaBrawn knew his senses would not be able to find anything in their limited faculties, but he reached out with them anyway. Nothing.

"Tanner... what is it?"

JaBrawn

eye color: greenish brown

Skin Color: caucasian

Size: 6'3"

weight: 600 pounds

Age: He is only around a decade old, but has had several lifetimes' worth of living "downloaded" to his noggin.

human?: Artificially created and shot through and through with cosmic energy, but as far as general appearance and basic physiology, yes. His general appearance is of a slightly tall but inhumanly broad man in a nondescript suit and hat.

Strengths: Super strength and speed, rapid healing, eventually some light mental powers

Weaknesses: Has not been here long so lacks hard experience. There's only so much you can be told; true mastery of anything comes with doing it. Also gets frustrated with humanity at times, and ponders why he has been placed in such a position as a protector of it.

Personality: JaBrawn is basically agreeable though with a rather acidic sense of humor at times. He tends to not waste words, and has yet to really appreciate working well with others. The only other hero with whom he spends any real time teaming up is his friend Alloy, who can be even more abrasive than he can - though somehow she makes it cute.

Origin: Be warned. It's gigantic. http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showf...art=1&vc=1

JaBrawn was transfixed by the efficiency and... gusto? with which the very large fellow dispatched his attackers, and was equally impressed with the simple matter he scooped up his 6'3" 600 pound frame up as easily as child's and leaped away from the uncomfortable large onslaught of trolls who may or may not have seen them.

Once they were a good two blocks from the area, JaBrawn had nearly healed, and the nauseating lurching his vision had been doing had cleared.

"Here friend... this is far enough, I think."

(Completely open rp, jump in, read, criticize, drink soda, whatevah)

JaBrawn blinked in a dazed stupor from the dent in the street in which he was now sitting. It was shaped like his backside, for the impact of said body area is what created the dent. Looking up from this vantage point, the pair of Outkast bricks that put him there leered.

"Think yer in a little over yer head, hero."

The other chuckled, the layers of stone encrusting his upper body shifting slightly. "Whadya think, Mortar? He had enough, or is he still too alive?"

Mortar cocked back a rocky fist the size of a mailbox. "Oh I think he could stand to be quite a bit more dead."

JaBrawn rolled back, the vast bulk of his body crumpling asphalt. The lethal punch the brick loosed hit the street with such concussive force that the suit-clad cosmic construct was nearly thrown from his feet yet again. Backpedaling to put some distance between he and his rather foolish choice of adversaries, JaBrawn flicked dust and debris from his hat, the thick, blunt fingers moving in an almost graceful gesture. He attempted to smile arrogantly through his vandyke, but what came across must have appeared as more a grimace.

"And here I was thinking the afternoon would go so much more enjoyably."

The false bravado of his words rang far too clearly.

God how he hated the Hollows and all its freakish denizens.

He awoke back at his apartment, feeling tingly and cold. He lifted a hand to his head and found that it was still there, at the top of his neck where it belonged; which was odd, considering that the last time he had had physical form his head was one of the last things more or less attached. He peered down at his legs and marveled at how things had turned out.

What had happened, by the way?

The incredible ordeal returned to his mind in a torrent of images and sensations. DeMezry’s attack, the battle, the feeling of dying, the meeting of his creator, DeMezry’s death-he held his head in his hands as the flood washed over him.

Was it really done? Did DeMezry really die? For some inexplicable reason, he felt a pang of loss at the thought. But how could me miss something so repugnant?

“It’s not that you miss him; it’s that you missed who he could have been. And, of course, now he’ll never be who he could have been.”

This woman’s voice, so painfully familiar coming from between his ears now seemed off center and discordant now that it came from somewhere else. He turned his head, and saw the form that she had chosen to take.

A slender, lovely woman of maybe forty earth years sate delicately in a chair. Her hair was straight, blonde, and lustrous. Her face etched with the slightest lines of time, she seemed young, ancient, and ageless all at once. Dressed in simple blue jeans and a white sweater, she was radiant in her simplicity. She was absolutely lovely.

He sat up, and felt absurdly heavy. He felt as if his strength had completely left him.

“It hasn’t. Mostly, but not all.”

He opened his mouth to speak, paused as he pondered its futility, then did it anyway.

“Why is that? I feel strange all over.”

She smiled at him, but it was a smile laced with pain and sadness.

“You have been remade, JaBrawn. Once you gave entirely of yourself in the interest of protecting others, you were given a new body. One of flesh and blood that is, now, not nearly as powerful nor resilient as the last, but will, in time, make its power pale in comparison.”

JaBrawn swallowed a lump of wonder and panic. Was this true? He clenched his hand into a fist, and felt the fluid blood under his skin. He felt the muscles contract and the tendons pull, and even felt his nails digging into his skin.

“What am I then? More than I was? Less?”
She shook her head slightly, her smile deepening.

“You are human, mostly, latticed through and through with cosmic energy that will grow steadily more powerful through time. Your strength and speed are not even half what they were and your mental powers are practically nil, but, as I said…” She shrugged prettily.

JaBrawn nodded, but a painful question arose instantly.

“Why?” She preempted softly. “Because it is your last gift. To be human, finally, but with even greater potential. You had to be coaxed along, JaBrawn, with my irritating presence as your anti-conscience as it were. The initial vision of yourself as a humanitarian warrior was placed before you, of course, and you accepted it, however reluctantly; but, with me to poke and prod and entice you with the things that you were to renounce, you, in turn, became what I had wanted from the beginning of your own volition.”

It made horrible, horrible sense. He should have been angry, but could not make the emotion stir. Was this her doing?

“No. You choose not to be angry with me because you see the sense of it. And you see how DeMezry failed.”

“He did not have this guidance.” JaBrawn said, his voice thick with regret for a mistake he did not even make. “He was thrown into this world, saw its horrors, and became the horror to top them all.”

“Yes,” the woman said, her eyes filling with tears. “It was the only way he knew how to best his environment. He was given a great intellect and great abilities, but no knowledge and no wings under which to take shelter when he needed it.”

JaBrawn’s anger finally flickered.

“Those were wings I was under when you were tormenting me?”

Again, she shook her head.

“Yes, but not in the sense of loving comfort; in the sense that they did keep you dry whether or not it was pleasant to be under them.”

Her words were reasonable, **** it.

“What now?”

She stood quietly, and walked over to him, her soft shoes touching the floor with hardly a noise.
“Go back out into the world, JaBrawn. You will learn to adapt to your lesser powers, and will flourish later as they develop beyond what you could ever imagine.” She laid a hand on his cheek, and the sensation was like a sunbeam slicing through an icestorm. “Nothing really had ended, other than the beginning: you can truly begin now. The creature that was my most painful failure is gone, and I could not have taken him without your help. And I think you have made a powerful ally, as well.”

His eyes snapped open wide.

“Alloy! Is she-is she--?”

She smiled.

“She is fine, JaBrawn. I told her everything.”

He looked at her, concern in his eyes.

“Does she know about her father?”

“As yet, no. The time for that knowledge will come-but not for a while.”

JaBrawn nodded.

“So.”

“So.”

They looked at each other gently, awe at what had happened and where they were filling the space between them.

“I will miss you, my son.”

“And I will miss you, Mother.”

He paused, words slipping from his grasp.

“Will we never see each other again?”

“Of course we will, JaBrawn. But it won’t be for some time I’m afraid.”

He smiled briefly, bitterly.

“I see.”

“Yes. You finally do.”

She smiled again, and in a flash of something that was not truly light, she was gone.

***

Moments later, he was out of his apartment, and walking down the street.

The sun was shining brightly, and he wondered where Alloy had gotten herself. He felt an odd but warming kinship with her, and wanted greatly to be with her again-in circumstance other than beating people up even.

He smiled at this thought, and wondered if his sense of humor would develop with the rest of him. His hampered strength and quite nearly vanished powers of telepathy and aurasense made him uncomfortable to the point of being nearly frightened to face off with anyone.

But, she had said that these abilities as well as others would grow even beyond their previous levels-which were quite respectable, if he did say so himself.

The people of Paragon city were out and about on their busy day-to-day duties. Some glanced curiously at him, some glanced nervously at him, but most ignored him completely. They were all beautiful to him, he realized with a start. Beautiful and precious. He felt a flush rise to his cheeks at this heartfelt awareness, but he reveled in it as well. It was nice to feel it, really. It was new. Different.

The sidewalk felt hard and warm beneath his feet, and the air smelled of smoke and summer.

It was a good day to be alive. And he planned to stay alive even on the bad days.

He passed a bus stop, where a mother and a child sat reading a book. With a dim fondness, he recognized them as the parent and child from the burnt out building days earlier. She was cladin a new dress, and the boy was scrubbed and smiling. Life seemed to be improving for them, and he was glad for this. Then he noticed the book they were reading-the one that they had nearly finished.

Pinocchio.

He pored over the story in his mind, and chuckled quite deeply as he recalled the ending.

He chuckled quite deeply indeed.

See you in town.

The Beginning

This presence seemed to be a slice of a star itself, making Alloy's gleaming skin seem as bright as a dried up mud puddle. All former feelings of acidity at the conversations before suddenly seemed ridiculous to bother with.

"What are you then?" He asked.

She smiled again, radiantly, and JaBrawn felt a kind of awe. Something that always felt wrong suddenly made sense.

"Open yourself up to him, JaBrawn."

"But he's a she, at the moment..."

He felt the glow of her smile fade, and found himself wishing he had not said anything to cause this. He also felt foolish for thinking that.

"'She' was created as a he. This changed as his heart and mind did, to include both the other gender and neither."

The pounding seemed to pause--and then resume with greater fervor.

"Who is he?" JaBrawn asked softly.

The warmth of her presence shrouded itself in a cool veil of shame, regret, and sadness. He felt his sould tie itself in a knot as if he were feeling it himself.

"He... was what you might have become."

JaBrawn felt that sink in like pieces of ice slipped into his ears.

"I don't understand."

"You will. First things first. Allow him entry into this sanctum."

There was a moment’s hesitation as some pessimistic side of him that demanded recognition muttered that this was some trick, some manner of subterfuge; but, a deeper, more fundamental side of him knew that this was not so. He knew that she was… her, the one who made him everything that he was.

“No,” she said softly, reading his thoughts as clearly as if he had scratched them in the sky, “not everything.”

He felt that same shudder of astonishment that he had earlier-and then opened this last refuge to DeMezry’s relentless assault. A small portal, surely not larger than a pinhole, opened above him, and a thin helixed tendril of greenish, smoky light slipped through it. It assumed the shape of a pulsing, spherical cloud, purely malignant in appearance yet strangely beautiful.

DeMezry had arrived.

A sighing voice that seemed more felt than heard reached JaBrawn’s ears.

“I see you’ve met the one who started this whole mess, Brother. Truly it was she that caused our enmity; not I.”

JaBrawn felt a wash of revulsion and anger roil in him.

“That is not how I remember it, DeMezry.”

“Is it not? Is that more for your convenient morality than actual truth?”

“Cease,” said the female entity. “DeMezry… it is time for you to come back to me.”

A soft chuckle seemed to emanate from everywhere.

“I don’t think that that is going to happen, Mother dearest. I have grown too fond to living without your leash-I don’t believe I am simply going to relinquish this and return to the bonds I so grew to hate.”

The green light began to expand, filling the oval habitat that JaBrawn had formed within himself. He felt that last vestiges of control and presence that he had here begin to slip away.

“Now that you have no doubt coerced my pale little reflection to open this final pocket of himself to me, I will take over what remains of his body, re-assimilate myself, and be more powerful than ever before.”

JaBrawn sense himself fading away entirely this time, and wondered if there truly were any way for him to exist after this. It certainly did not seem possible at the moment.

“You misunderstand me, child.” The entity said. “What I had said was not a question. It was a statement.”

Abruptly the light stopped expanding. It did not yet shrink but seemed halted.

“Let me go, [censored] of the stars. You no longer have any say over me or my existence on this miserable plain you abandoned me on.”

“DeMezry,” she said quietly, “I feel pity for you, but I also feel shame. I feel shame for how foolishly optimistic I had felt that simply creating you and placing you in the arms of humanity would show you the right way to live and let others live.”

The light wavered, and then the entity took unshakeable control. It began receding immediately. DeMezry grunted with the strain.

The entity continued.

“I feel shame that I had thought honor and compassion were inherent traits by all beings who were superior to those of its surroundings. I feel shame that I had not remade you the moment I realized this flaw, which was quite soon after you had been placed here.”

The luminescence continued to withdraw, and DeMezry began shrieking with rage and fear.

“But mostly, DeMezry, my lost and wretched son… I feel shame that I had not killed you long, long ago.”

The light suddenly sucked in on itself, leaving only the wildly shifting sphere of energy that was DeMezry’s core.

“Mother! No! Please, I’ll be whatever you want me to be, please don’t kill me!”

JaBrawn reeled under the buffeting surges of energy, pain, and emotion that overflowed the both of them. For a moment he truly felt sorry for him-but it would have done him little good even if JaBrawn had intervened.

“DeMezry, you will now do the only thing left I require of you.”

The ball of green light flashed, and then vanished.

“You will die.”

The room drifted away to blackness, as did JaBrawn’s senses. In seconds, he was unconscious.

His limbs felt began to feel like frozen lead, and his vision began to take everything in as monochrome. His ears filled with some sort of rushing ululation that drowned out everything else in his hearing. The pulsing glow of stored cosmic energy at the core of his body that flowed to his fingers and his toes began withdrawing.

She was drawing from him with more voraciousness than before, a groan of ecstasy slipping from her lips as she did so. JaBrawn tugged furiously at her with the strength he had left, but she latched on with a fervor that was fed with both her strength, and now his. He no longer had the power to break free. A horrible sense of helpless vulnerability began to seep into his mind as he came to grips with the very real possibility that he might actually die; his staunch words that he had snapped off at DeMezry only moments earlier seemed pale and juvenile now.

He looked down and saw that his facade had faded with his vitality; the wrinkled appearance of his clothes had turned to crystal that cracked and fell from him in flakes and dust. He felt his eyelids stiffen as they became useless, and almost instantly after that, his vision slipped away like someone blowing out a pair of candles.

"It is nearly over, young one." DeMezry purred into the crumbling funnel of his right ear. "Fight with what little you have left, for such struggling forces the last of what you are into me."

JaBrawn ceased fighting and simply withdrew into himself. He felt his fingers snap off and his knees collapse. His torso slammed into the ground and cracked nearly from end to end. DeMezry took, and took, and took, until there was only a spark of him left, buried deep within the travesty of the form he once wore.

Not satisified until she had drained him completely away, DeMezry fought to penetrate this inner shell of him, using her newly stolen strength to pierce the armor both physical and spiritual that kept her from it.

JaBrawn found himself inside a glowing ovoid. He looked about him and discovered that he was only energy, a dancing mote of light that defined him at the most fundamental of levels; yet, it was still he, through and through. A cell of life is still life, and this tiniest piece of what he was, was all he ever really need be to exist.

Of course, this was no longer enough for him. He wanted back what had been taken.

Peering upwards at a ceiling that was not really there in any physical sense, he could feel DeMezry slamming into something that was trying to protect him, some shield he had erected to safeguard this last retreat. The twisted parody of himself sounded like a giant banging on the attic of a castle, demanding entry.

"And what will do if we let you in, oh giant?"

"Why, I'll devour you all!"

"Odd motivation."

JaBrawn chuckled with a mouth that was no longer there, and observed options. There were not many. He could remain here, protected for probably a very long time until either DeMezry finally found a way in or gave it up for lost--the latter of which did not seem likely. Or, he could gather this last particle of his might and charge towards the place where she was banging and ripping at, going out in a blaze of not very much.

Grim menu, that.

"It's not as bad as you think, JaBrawn."

He turned his "head," though it was really more of a shift of directional focus, and saw a gleaming tendril that materialized from somewhere and rooted itself here, at the core of his being.

"You... you're the voice that was in my head... are you not?"

He felt her smile at his manner of speaking that could still be so stilted, so archaic.

"That, yes; and much, much more."

DeMezry leapt backwards, a sphere of jade energy forming in each clawed palm. JaBrawn's impressive but ultimately futile expression of rage did nothing but make an unstable structure decidely more unstable.

JaBrawn wasted no time, which was easy; there was none to waste.

Ripping free a large chunk of steel-reinforced concrete from the flooring, he heaved it like an immense discus towards DeMezry. He was stunned and furious with what this nightmare made real had said. He refused to accept it.

DeMezry dropped low in a stiff-legged crouch, and the missile sailed over her head. Without a word her legs coiled and shot her across the room and directly for him. Simultaneously, she threw both her hands forward, launching the ball of crackling green light.

JaBrawn leapt straight up, both attacks passing beneath him. Grasping the edge of a support joist, he flipped up and over it, his weight supported for now by the fractured roof. Attempting to come up with tactics that a thousand-year-old soul vampire would not think of was a daunting task, but for some reason JaBrawn believed that dropping through the hole he just entered would take her by surprise.

It did. He landed right behind her.

For a moment they just stood there, with hardly a foot between their backs. JaBrawn looked slowly to his right, and met the corner of her gaze as she had looked to her left. This congruity chilled him.

"I will not fall, my brother," she said softly.

"That may be true, but neither will I." JaBrawn replied just as softly. "Something tells me that neither you nor myself will survive this."

He saw the corner of her eye narrow in anger. And then she spun in a blur of motion, her blades slashing towards his chest. Throwing both his hands out, he caught her wrists. She snapped a kick up and out, catching him squarely in the chest. JaBrawn gritted his teeth, and then threw himself backwards while planting a foot squarely in the middle of her stomach, sending her cartwheeling through the air. Right before he let go, however, he felt that familiar tug at his energy reserves, the sensation that let him know that she could take his very essence with every prolonged contact.

Such a contest only had one outcome, and it was one he was not interested in having. Quick and violent was the call, no grasping and crushing. Too bad, really. She did not deserve a quick demise.

Holding his fists to either side and lowering his center of gravity, JaBrawn charged across the rotted shell of the building, the shattered concrete floor thundering under his feet.

DeMezry, having recovered somewhat from JaBrawn's throw, planted her feet and waited for her enemy to draw near.

Sensing this as well, JaBrawn hopped to his right, bringing his left fist across in a low, humming arc. At the same moment, DeMezry had slashed forward with both hand, until her forearms crossed in front of her. She took the full force of JaBrawn's punch right in the forehead.

The result was not very pretty.

Her skull split down the forehead, and her neck whipped backward with such force, that her feet left the ground and she was airborne. With sundering force, she bounced off the far wall behind her, snapping a support beam on her way.

JaBrawn forced away his desire to feel relief. This was not over. He peered at her repulsive form with his aurasense, and saw the roilng miasma that was her spirit dim somewhat, but quickly return.

He stomped towards her, snatching the bottom half of the beam she broke out of the floor, and, raising it over his head, brought it down with both hands with enough force to snap it in half like a matchstick.

And snap in half it did. But not on DeMezry's skull, as he had planned. It hit the concrete floor and nothing else. She had vanished.

He gritted his teeth in annoyance.

The voice toned in quietly. "She has stepped--"

"--Outside of our reality again, gotcha." JaBrawn muttered mentally. "Can you tell when she will return?"

"Only with the barest of warning signs, there is hardly a tenth of second needed for her to... oh."

There was a blur of sound and motion behind him, and suddenly her deceptively thin arms were wrapped as well as they could get around his torso. Instantly, he felt her draining him away, like he was a fat moth caught in a black widow's maw.

In a few seconds, he would be too weak to break her grip.

JaBrawn had told DeMezry that he wanted to end it. Perhaps that end was now finally upon him?

"Soon. Soon, all will be clear JaBrawn," came her voice again.

For some reason, the smooth cadence of her voice filled him with dread--for some reason, he would have much rather preferred one of her jibes than this portentious sentence.

But, discomforted by her words or not, one thing was certain: he believed her.

JaBrawn pushed off of rooftop after holed, decaying rooftop with nothing to show for it even after more than an hour. It made no sense really; DeMezry was injured and much weaker than before. She could not have gotten far even if she had gone underground.

Yet she was gone.

Even stranger, her pyschic trail seemed to have winked out of existence. It is one thing for the trail to be followed to an end, but to vanish entirely? Either she was possessed of abilities she had not yet revealed, or... what? Not even death would result in such erasure.

JaBrawn peered up at the glinting spike of gold that was his new friend. Alloy glided easily through the sky now, her power nearing complete restoration, as was his. It was an odd feeling--to have help in this, whatever it was. To have someone "have his back," as he had heard amongst the humans.

It was comforting and also alarming, to know that there was someone else who had already come close to death so that he would be safe.

He smiled briefly, and then passed his aurasense along the streets, seeking the underground sewers and waterways that entangled one another. There were several, but all were deserted except for the occasional rodent or cat.

Where could she possibly be?

He leapt across a considerable gap between two crumbling apartment buildings. The edge of the roof dissolved into powder under his left foot. He glanced back momentarily, concerned that people might be hit by debris.

There was not. It did not really matter, since nothing but dust fell.

"Yes, but you used to jump from roof to roof with no concern at all for what may fall from such actions."

Somehow, he was becoming accustomed to her long stretchs of silence punctuated with sudden comments.

"Perhaps," he replied in his head.

"There is no 'perhaps' to it, JaBrawn. You know this."

There was an odd tone of contentment in her voice, and it did not seem as if it came from the simple fact that she was right. There was concern for him from her, despite their earliest dealings. After all, she had tried to warn him when DeMezry had...

...Wait...

He stood stock still, his mouth hanging open. "Do you know where DeMezry is?" JaBrawn asked out loud.

"Yes," she replied coolly.

He froze, letting her completely nonchalant answer to a question he had been asking himself for the last sixty or so minutes wash around him.

Admirably, he did not stomp around cursing like he normally did.

"I see. Well, then, voice in my head, might you tell me where I can find her?"

"She has been following you since you fell from the rooftop." JaBrawn gaped again. "She has simply moved her existence outside of this reality. She cannot hear what we are saying, and can really only barely see us--something like looking through stained glass. You can make out shapes and movement, but not much else. Of course, your shape is rather distinctive."

"So... how do I get her out?"

"You can't. You must wait for her to come back here. It shouldn't take long. It is a drain to remain between realities, and she was weaker than before."

The strangely garbed construct rubbed his goatee thoughtfully. "I must bait her somehow, or keep moving until I am nowhere near a position where she can have any advantage in battle when her energy dwindles and she must return."

"Sound reasoning," the voice said with a touch of sarcasm. "Of course, you would do well to remember that, at times, 'a weak enemy can be the strongest of opponents.'"

JaBrawn sifted through his memory. It sounded Chinese, though his expertise on such words was only topical. "Was that Sun Tzu?"

Again, he sensed that ethereal smile. "No. Thor, the son of Odin."

"I didn't know he existed."

"He does, but not here."

Attempting to maintain some semblance of not knowing the truth, JaBrawn pushed off from the cracked and ruined asphalt of the street and landed atop a very old movie theater.

Just then, opportunity struck.
The molded edge of the roof he crouched on had given somewhat when he had landed on it. As he sat there, he felt it give further. There was a fall of twenty-five or so feet to the street, enough to daze him or even hurt him--if he were not ready for it.

It seemed a long shot, but he did not want to leave any more to chance than he already had. If "the voice" was correct, the longer DeMezry stood outside this reality the weaker she would become. But how long would that take? Hours? Days? His knowledge of the despicable creature's abilities was simply too limited.

Attempting to appear as if he were looking about him for some sign of his nemesis, JaBrawn was quite nearly taken by surprise when the moulding finally gave way. He made an effort to land facefirst, but absorbed most of the impact with his hands. The impact was jarring, but he was not injured.

Laying there and not moving, he waited. A few seconds passed. Then half a minute.

It did not appear to be working.

He lifted his head, and saw a dainty foot the color of gleaming porcelain not quite six feet from his head.

"We do not know each well yet, JaBrawn, but I am slightly offended you would find me that easy to fool."

Raising his head further, he looked at the perfectly aligned contours of DeMezry's face. Her faultless symmetry seemed all the more horrifying because of its beauty, for he knew the squirming life that dwelled beneath this veneer.

"I am sincerely growing weary of all this, DeMezry. There is obviously more to this quarrel between you and I than my theft of a meal from you." He rolled back to a squatting position. DeMezry did not flinch, only followed his movement. "There seems to be even more enmity than what would follow my first victory over you. A being as powerful as you claim and as old would not pour so many resources into defeating an enemy as you did--especially since those very resources have been taxed of late."

DeMezry was not nude, as before. A glimmering dress of silver blades surrounded her tightly.

"I also do not buy this 'entertainment' that I provide for you. Surely there is other entertainment that would not prove so costly."

He stood, and they faced each other.

"Finally, I know that you are not the voice that speaks to my mind. There are too many indiscrepancies, too many times where this voice told me things that nearly cost you your life. NO one is that interested in entertainment."

DeMezry smirked, and slowly shook her head. When she spoke, it was with a voice that no human woman could ever--nor would ever, most likely--hope to possess.

"Your simple logic has trapped me. Bravo."

There was a series of explosions outside.

"Alloy." JaBrawn voiced quietly, and tried to peer through a large hole his passing had caused. He saw her whipping about, dropping golden fireballs beneath her at unseen foes.

DeMezry smiled slightly. "Others of my embrace are battling her. She is not in any imminent danger, for now, from them. She is to be an after dinner mint. After you, of course."

Again, a surreal, tense moment of non-action. Neither of them moved.

"She is afraid, JaBrawn," came the voice again. "I can feel it."

He made no sign that he had heard her. "Indulge me then, monstrosity. Why all this bitterness? I had asked before, why not simply turn away? If not to gather strength and fight again if nothing else?"

DeMezry's smirk collapsed into an inhuman scowl. "Because you are the perfect child, JaBrawn. And I was--am--the black sheep."

JaBrawn blinked and then matched her scowl with one of his own. "What do you mean?"

DeMezry's fingers lengthened into slim blades glittering with emerald energy.

"I mean, we came from the same womb. Only I was the failure, and you are the prodigal son. And I knew when we met, that I was to be replaced--in a very brutal fashion. In essence, I am the one fighting for my life... such as it is."

The cosmic construct, now one of two if DeMezry's words could be believed, almost laughed. But it died in his throat and was replaced by a groan of horror.

"This... cannot be. We are nothing alike."

Fans of crackling heat erupted around DeMezry's hands, each finger blade a foot long.

"True. Nothing."

"You..." JaBrawn raised his fists and brought them down with such force that the floor and the sturdy foundation itself cracked like styrofoam. "...LIE!"

JaBrawn knew that falling sixty feet would not take very long. A few seconds at best. Yet, time seemed to cycle down until it seemed hardly faster than the stroll of a glacier. He at first thought he had inadvertently triggered his slowsense, but this was not the case. Reality itself had become a chronological quagmire.

He tore his eyes from DeMezry and looked between his feet, where the outer holed wall of the structure blurred slowly by. Would he survive? If he did he'd be in no shape to defend himself.

Finally, impact. Wait... no. It wasn't. He hit something, but it wasn't the ground, it was too soft. He was set down, somewhat clumsily. He looked up at the almost dull gray form of Alloy. She turned her head slightly, and a hollow male voice issued from her mouth. "Are you hurt?"

JaBrawn shook his head. "You're the one I saw in her spirit... the man who was very close to her."

Alloy nodded. "Mostly. I'm not actually in her spirit, my spirit inhabits the metal skin she has imprisoned herself in. But you're right, I was very close to her. I'm her father."

He took a step forward, looking up. DeMezry was gone. Doubtfully forever. "She is unconscious, and I am drawing on reserves that could conceivably kill her. I must go."

JaBrawn had dozens of questions, but did not want to endanger the girl. He simply nodded and said, "Thank you. You have quite a daughter."

He turned towards him, smiling in an unnerving sort of way. "You have no idea." He then lay down on the street, in an area where the sun struck Alloy's body directly. Slowly, whorls of gold began pushing the gray away.

JaBrawn stood and looked around him. DeMezry had either figured he was dead (or incapacitated) or had seen everything and was flying down the backside of the building in a rage.

Fine. He could live with either. One way or another they would meet, and things would be settled.

For now, he sat near his friend and waited for her to recover.
Alloy recovered quickly.

Before her former luster was even completely restored, she sat up groggily and peered about her, the wicked looking fins of her armor slicing the air. Slowly.

"Ugh... God... whoever this DeMezry is, he has just about completely hacked me off..." She turned towards JaBrawn's kneeling figure. "Oh! You're... okay?" She shifted to a reclining position, one knee up and one palm holding her from the pavement. "What happened?"

JaBrawn was uncertain as to whether he should say something or not. Her father--what was left of him, at any rate--had not asked him to keep his identity from her; however, he may not have had time to do so, hoping that JaBrawn would come to that conclusion on his own.

After all--she did not know about him. Right?

"I'm not really sure what happened. I think you might have made one last ditch effort to break my fall, I really don't know."

Her eyes were nearly a featureless slit, but her brow furrowed. "I was out cold, JaBrawn. Whatever saved your butt wasn't me."

JaBrawn looked back at her, wanting to prod at her mind in hopes of finding her father and asking her directly. Again he hesitated, for the last two times he attempted entry into her spirit her father shoved him out; yet, it was clear her father did not see him as an enemy, or he would not have saved his life.

The entire situation befuddled him.

"You will know when the time is right to tell her," came the voice in his head.

"Very well," he replied, confounded again by the voice's complete lack of sarcasm. He wanted to ask her why the change in venue from abuse to advise, but Alloy had regained her feet.

"Well then whatever 'saved my butt' has stumped us both, because I don't remember anything other than hitting the ground."

She looked at him curiously for a moment. "Okay, well then we'll just write it off to the luck of the stupid. I'll fly up and around and scout out where the filthy bugger may have gotten off to."

She noticed the big fellow peering at her. He had been so quite often, of late. If the situation were different and he was not some quartz-filled weirdo and she was not wearing a suit of liquid armor that she could not remove, she would have almost thought he was checking her out.

He was, in a way. But it was not in any manner she could have surmised.

Finally, he spoke. "Yes, that's a good idea. I'll hop across some rooftops and see what I can find as well." JaBrawn pointed skyward to the broken hulk of a structure that he had just fallen from. "That's where I last saw it--her." Memory plucked at him. "It's wearing the guise of a small, slim woman now. With silver hair."

If Alloy was at all surprised or even interested in such information, she did not show it. "Right, then." She lifted into the air, her strength growing as the sun poured energy back into her. "I'll keep you in sight too, in case she tries an ambush."

JaBrawn nodded up at her. "She may also have more little helpers. Alloy?"

She slowed her ascent. "What?"

He smirked. "Be careful. You're a very easy target up there."

"Humph," she said back, but JaBrawn could plainly see a lop-sided grin on her face.

Turning away from her and facing his task and the grim world of the hazard zone was like turning from the sun and looking at a corpse. He growled at the prospect before him, but did not hesitate as he leapt from rooftop to rooftop, attaining a height from which he could get a better view.

What greeted him was surprising.

Nothing. DeMezry had gone, which made absolutely not sense. Where could she have disappeared, and why? JaBrawn had been helpless, as had Alloy. She could have ended it there.

Unless--she wanted this chase?

Regardless, JaBrawn was no longer alone in the hunt, and DeMezry was obviously weaker than she had once been. If she wanted a chase, he would oblige, and, apparently, so would Alloy.

He grabbed Alloy and leapt across the street, though the tentacles made no attempt to give chase.

He landed lightly enough, setting her on her feet. She was still unstable, and held herself up on the corner of a building. "Wh-what is that thing?"

JaBrawn shook his head. "I have no idea, but we've... met, before."

The tentacles coallesced into a vaguely doglike form, though it was a canine unlike any other in reality. It's skin was a collection of supporating warts, it's teeth were jagged shards of yellow, and its eyes were glowing green puddles. "Met?" It muttered with a voice that sounded half-strangled, "Oh yes, we've met." It hopped from the small crater JaBrawn had made for it, alighting on taloned paws. "And you were hardly cooperative, JaBrawn. All I wanted was to end your pointless little existence. Trust me, it would have been a favor above any other that I could render you."

JaBrawn stepped away from Alloy, making them separate targets. "It's become less pointless DeMezry. I think I'm beginning to give a da*n about certain things. No, you are not one of them."

It cackled, it's jaw distending like a snake. "Riiiiight. Let me guess: You don't know why your maker put you here, and you don't understand why she loves these little frailties called humans." It advanced one step, its claws slicing through the asphalt. "Every day after they've recharged their pitiful little minds with an absurdly necessary bout of unconsciousness, they recommit themselves to an existence that seems rife with nothing other than pity, hopelessness, and evil." It sneered. "Yet you continue."

JaBrawn recoiled inwardly. DeMezry was far too accurate. It continued. "And every time you sought out your creator for guidance... she rebuffs you as a slightly amusing but mostly hopeless experiment." It sneered like Satan himself. "Just like your charges."

And there was the flaw. "No, DeMezry. She tells me that she wishes she could help, but the best way is to learn myself."

Alloy began to clear up, her power returning. JaBrawn clenched his fists as well as his jaw.

"Let's end this, you monstrosity."

DeMezry smiled a very gruesome smile. "Monstrosity? You judge me on my appearance, eh? Well I assume this guise because of its nastiness." It's ribcage flexed and dozens of oozing sores along its flanks glistened. "Even if you could strike me without me sucking away your life, who would want to, eh?"

And it leaped into the air, closing the distance between JaBrawn and Alloy in hardly a second. JaBrawn dropped to his back, hoping that DeMezry would overshoot him, but the sickening creature was beginning to preempt his strategies. It ended up dropping straight down on top of him, claws open and ready to shred through his still recovering body like knives through paper.

A flash of light and DeMezry was careening away from him to his right. JaBrawn looked over, and Alloy slumped to the ground. "Sorry... completely drained me... on your own..." and she fell, exhausted.

The blast was more force than heat, and had hardly injured DeMezry. It chuckled darkly. "And so she removes herself from the fight whilst I am hardly winded from her efforts." It shook its canine head, and crouched to spring again.

JaBrawn leaped to the top of the building he was near, a shell of a department store that may have once shown things bright and beautiful to passersby. Now it was witness to only violence. "Why are you so hell-bent on revenge, DeMezry? I can see that you are much weaker than you were." He wearily tugged a thick furnace exhaust pipe from the tattered rooftop. "Wouldn't it be easier to just walk away?"

DeMezry relaxed slightly. "Well of course it would. But you forget my purpose, oh stringed one. I am not necessarily evil, though I would appear to be." In one smooth motion, it was at the same rooftop JaBrawn occupied, appearing entirely unconcerned over the makeshift weapon he was wielding. "I seek only entertainment. You made such seeking markedly more difficult, since the arcane energies of the souls I had harvested had escaped." It tapped a trio of toes, as if in admonishment. "Oh they were fascinating. I'm certain there were spirits in my gullet who had once walked with the pharoahs!" It laughed, its jaw working up and down in a grotesque movement.

JaBrawn shook his head almost sadly. "How did you become this? You have such power and knowledge... why indulge in such horrible things?"

DeMezry circled to its left. JaBrawn merely turned slightly, hefting the pipe in one hand. DeMezry said, "Yes. Power and knowledge. It may have one day been yours too... though I think you are more interested in knowledge."

"He's attempting something..." came her voice, unbidden and completely out of nowhere. "...I wouldn't listen, if I were you."

"What makes you think I was going to?"

DeMezry broke in. "Who do you talk to, when you talk in your head? I can tell you are communicating, that is plainly obvious. At first I thought you were simply talking to yourself, but... no. You seem far too boring to do something like that."

JaBrawn was surprised. Was it that obvious when he spoke to her? Or did this filthy being have some means to see his thoughts... or almost see them, in any case. "I don't know what you are speaking of," he said.

DeMezry shook its head. "No. You are lying. Who is it? Another personality perhaps? Some ghost turned demon bending your ear in frustration for not having been 'saved' by you?" It chuckled again, ropes of saliva drifting from its teeth. And then suddenly it stopped. "Wait... it's neither is it?"

JaBrawn paused, his brow furrowed. He did not answer. DeMezry took another step closer. He looked around, and found another rooftop close enough yet higher than the one he was on. If he fell from high enough, he could be destroyed. Perhaps DeMezry could as well. He jumped to the top of it. DeMezry followed.

"It's a woman's voice, isn't it?" The thing cackled.

JaBrawn's concerned multiplied. Still he said nothing, he just stared, his feet spread apart, the pipe held at his side.

"A voice that won't leave you alone. Yet she will not reveal who or what she is, correct?" It relaxed somewhat, settling on its haunches--and at once began to shift its appearance from that of a hideously formed animal, to something more human in appearance. A hole opened above what looked like a neck, and continued to speak. "How maddening it is."

The reasoning behind pretense became moot. "How do you know this?"

The shape continued to mold itself, becoming more human... and feminine. "How do I know? I would have thought it to be obvious." And then it was finished. A beautiful woman with hair like spun silver rose to her feet in the spot that was once a revolting canine charicature. It began walking towards JaBrawn, who, though stunned at the transformation, was not so ruled by his slowly developing male tendencies as to fall prey to one of the oldest traps in the book.

"Yes, DeMezry. How."

It/she was hardly a foot away. Every last synthetically formed muscle in JaBrawn's body was tensed. It said, "Because she's me, of course." JaBrawn's eyes shot wide and his entire body froze.

And, with two dainty hands that seemed almost childish in size, she shoved him off the edge of the building. He fell backfirst, and his eyes were locked on "hers" as he plunged towards the street and what must have been his doom.

Alloy was on the ground and not moving. Her former shining skin was dull and tarnished looking. She appeared dead. Standing near her was a large, shabbily dressed man, grinning though a broken smile of jagged, rotted teeth which were framed by a knotted, filthy bush of a beard.

JaBrawn realized now, that he was off the ground and dangling from something. He looked down and saw that a twisted, rusted spike of a girder had pierced him from back to front and was now protruding some three feet from his stomach. The pain was quite tremendous, of course, but he shunted it away and focused on his surroundings. Lil was nowhere to be found. He was uncertain as to why, but reasoned that it had something to do with the arrival of the other fellow.

Reaching out as far as he could, he grasped the flaking spear of iron and pulled himself along its length to the point, gritting his teeth against the pain and exertion. When he reached it, his enormous weight caused it to snap off and drop him two or so stories to the sidewalk.

The grizzled vagrant heard the impact and turned his head towards him. "Ah! So you're not dead. I had rather hoped that was the case."

JaBrawn began to heal, albeit slowly. "Who are you?"

The vagrant shook a shaggy head, tangled with scum and debris. "Immaterial." He grinned. "It would hardly be fun right now, anyway. I think I'll just polish off your little tart here," he reached a massive pair of grimy hands towards Alloy, "and then be on my way."

The vagrant clamped his hands on Alloy's shoulders, causing the dull tarnish of her skin to deepen at the contact. She moaned miserably. He seemed to be draining her lifeforce away, an attack that seemed to be all to common these days.

JaBrawn got to his feet, hefting a chunk of concrete the size of a man's head in one hand. The hole in his abdomen constricted and began to close. He cocked his hand behind his head.

"Leave her alone," he said, hardly above a whisper, and slung the chunk of debris with all of his strength.

So entranced was the vagrant in draining what was left of Alloy's vitality, that he did not see the impromptu missile until it split the air directly to the left of his head.

"Eh?" was all he said as he turned his attention just slightly enough to receive the chunk of sidewalk square between the eyes. It lifted him off his feet and dumped him on his butt. Alloy slumped to ground, quaking with his ministrations.

JaBrawn didn't relent for a moment. As soon as the vagrant stirred to a half sitting position, his head split open and leaking greenish-black ichor, JaBrawn was upon him, kicking him squarely in the chest at full gallop. He felt bones crunch under the blow, and the vagrant flew/skidded twenty feet down the street.

The cosmic construct again closed the distance between them, teeth gritted in fury. Rolling to his side and grunting with pain, the vagrant attempted once more to get to his feet. A solid punch to the middle of his back slammed into the pavement so hard it cracked and flew like sun-baked plastic.

JaBrawn stood over him, waiting.

The large sac of filth didn't move.

JaBrawn had learned that such things did not necessarily indicate anything entirely reliable, so he gave him one last slug to the back of the head, burying his face in the street. The poor scumbag had never even had a chance to beg.

Oversight?

He thought of the glee glinting in his eyes as he sucked Alloy's life away.

No. No oversight. "In fact," he lifted a foot to see how much of the thing's head he could bury out of sight when he heard an unsteady shuffling near him. He turned to investigate. Amazingly, Alloy had regained her feet and had mader her way groggily over to him.

"Nice touch," she said, lifting a shaky chin at his handiwork.

JaBrawn nodded. "Any ideas who it was?"

Alloy's face pinched in strain as she struggled to recall the events of the past few... seconds? Minutes?

"Lil... had shouted something when he seemingly melted into view from nothing..."

JaBrawn knelt by him, turning his head. He gathered together the strands of his mindforce, frayed as they were from his recent injuries. "What did he do to me that dropped me out of the standings so quickly?"

Her face relaxed slightly. "He slugged you in the back of the head." She squatted near him, regarding their strange attacker with her new friend. "You dropped to your knees, and he grabbed onto your neck with both hands. I guess he did to you what he did to me. Then he lifted you up and tossed you across the street where you were skewered on that I-beam." She winced. "Looked like it hurt."

He looked at her and smirked. "Nooo... felt wonderful."

She smirked back, but there was actually a piece of a smile in it . "By the way... thanks. Thanks for getting me out of this."

He shrugged, but smiled back at her. "Anytime."

"How... touching..." came a voice thick with phlegm and crushed cartilage. The vagrant suddenly collapsed into a mass of writhing tentacles, each a vile variation on the color of green, like congealed bile. JaBrawn leapt away, wrapping an arm around Alloy and taking her with him, out of reach of the horrid thing.

The tentacles were wavering madly, but not exactly thrashing. It was clear that they were in some sort of weakened state. The voice came again, from some unseen mouth. "She was so tasty! All bright and coppery, like a bloody mary mixed with actual blood. Too bad I can't reach her from here... I would so much like another morsel of her..." a segmented tentacle, like a blind millipede with no legs, uncoiled and worked the air in her direction, causing a gagging croack of revulsion to rise from Alloy's throat.

JaBrawn stared at it, a tattoo of disgust and hatred on his face. He finally knew who Lil's and the others' "boss" was.

"DeMezry."

Laughter like a thousand goblins gargling with snot filled the air.

"The one and only."

What a funny thing. What a funny, funny thing. To be... somewhere else, and then here. This non-place, this... warm emptiness. Yes, that's a good way to put it.

Here was nowhere, and that was just fine with him. Wherever it was that he came from was cold... cold and bright and too..
too...

...crowded? Yes, crowded. It was like being tied up inside a...

"Get up little one... get up now, or you will die..."

Who was that? He mentally swatted the irritating voice away, enjoying this sudden... nap.

"You need to get up my little one..."

"Leave me alone," he grumbled. "Just let me... sleep..." and his mind traipsied off somewhere infinite.

Or, it tried to traipsy off. Whatever was speaking to him had hold of a thread of his being, and tugged on it.

"You cannot leave, not now... not after everything... please, get up... there's still time... there's still time..."

He turned, sort of, if one could actually turn in an area of non-space. "Still time for what, exactly? Whatever sent me here for whatever reason that was, did me a favor."

"Who were you? Tell me."

He scoffed. "Oh what nonsense is this? I'm... I'm..." he paused. "I'm who I always was."

"No... you are what you once were... a sentient bit of nothing that was given form and mind and... heart."

He listened; and as he listened, there was an unpleasant rumbling in the warmth, a shudder that spoke of a realization, an epiphany, that was both necessary and horrific.

"Leave me alone," he murmured as if a child pleading with an unseen bully. "I don't want to go back there, it's so... noisy, and full of things that I don't understand. I don't like it there."

"I know... I understand... I wish I had before, but there are even limits to beings such as I... we know much, see much, and learn much, but we do not know everything... and we never will."

The shuddering became a uproarious quaking. Two great bands of glaring white light appeared far above him, spaced apart and surrounded by a receding blackness.

"Please," he begged. "Take me away from this. Make me how I was. I can't do what you want, I can't! I don't know how!"

"That's because you haven't learned how to yet. How will you if you give up?"

"I don't want to learn, don't you see? This is your dream, not mine! I don't want any part of it and I never did, da*n it all!"

"At least you can dream now... before, all you were was a dream..."

He felt himself drawing together, curling up; whether to seem as small as possible or wink out all together, he did not know. "I wish you had left me as that."

"No you don't... you may feel lost and confused, but you can feel... before you had no sense of what was good and bad, right and wrong... you would have to give up your awareness of the good things you feel, to be that again..."

Her words sank in. She could make him what he was... but he'd never know it. "Why did you do this? Why didn't you just create something from nothing, instead of trying to 'improve' something that was already there?"

The voice made a sound like a huge sigh. It was overrun with sadness and regret and loss.

"I did. Once."

The bands of whiteness grew larger, and as the light touched him, tingles of awareness returned. He was being attacked. And a new friend was in danger.

"Go to her..."

He felt himself lifting, filling the void around him.

"Be what I know you can be..."

He centered behind the bands of light, and continued to expand. He realized now that they were his eyes.

"Be a son that I know you really are... one I can be proud of..."

His mind returned. He remembered. He knew who he was.

"JaBrawn... do what you know is right... what you have learned thusfar is not nearly everything and never will be..."

There was laughter; horrible, sickening laughter, all around him.

"...but it is something."

She left.

He returned... to a world that had become even madder than it was.

Both heroes looked tiredly over at Lil as she rose from the street. "I'm going to burn away your skin and crack your bones like toothpicks!" Lil fumed, hunching over, her eyes blazing.

"When you've lost," JaBrawn said, as if the outcome had already been decided, "I'll pick your brain apart and find out who your boss is. And then--I'll leave you with just enough of your mind left to keep your heart beating and your lungs working. Wonder how long you'll be able to endure that before you go insane?" He clapped a palm against his face. "Oh that's right! You're already freakin' nuts!"

The three squared off against each other, and JaBrawn marveled slightly at his own words. He had obviously been hanging out with these blasted humans far too long--they were already rubbing off on him.
Lil's eyes flashed, and a bolt of white light lined with an emerald halo lanced from them, streaking towards JaBrawn too quickly for him to fully avoid. He did avoid most of it, however, and took only superfical damage across the backs of his legs as he jolted to his flank.

Lil seemed to be powering up again, but was walking backwards as she seethed at them through clenched teeth. JaBrawn should have taken the moment to attack, but instead asked the gleaming, injured woman beside him a question that, in most cases, is one of the first you ask someone--who wasn't trying to kill you when you met, that is. "What is your name?"

She had gotten to her feet, but was still winded and pained-looking. "Alloy," she murmured.

"Alloy," JaBrawn thought. "Interesting."

And then another bolt erupted from Lil, but he had already started moving before she had even loosed it--it impacted the corner of an old city church, shattering the wood to splinters.

JaBrawn had counted the seconds between the last blast, and this one. There were almost exactly 6 seconds between attacks. If she was launching them as soon as she was "powered up" to do so, then it should stay at that level, unless she began losing energy.

He counted off mentally, "4, 5, 6..." and there it came, like clockwork. He leaped over it, and landed with a thud. Lumbering over to where Alloy lay, he said quietly, "there are..."

"About six seconds between attacks," she finished for him.

He blinked. "How did...?"

She pushed unsteadily into the air, standing in the currents of wind like a rider on a weak-kneed horse. "Let's discuss this later, okay?"

"Of course," and ducked another blast.

"Hold still da*n both of you!" Lil hissed, clenching her fists in front of her.

JaBrawn wanted to take over her mind and shut her down, but it was impossible to do that while having to jump and dodge her attacks. He would have asked Alloy to provide a distraction, but she had already maneuvered up and away in a wide circle, beyond the reach of any request he might give her that Lil would not overhear. So, he had to get closer to the woman.

He stood upright, a nice tall, wide target, and counted off his seconds--she obviously had not caught on that they had caught on, because the beam came again. He ducked and launched himself forward, close to the ground, broad, thick arms outstretched.

She instantly realized what he was doing, and brought both fists down towards his head.

He, well, had not thought that she would think of that, and took the full brunt of the blow, his chin gouging into the ancient gray slate of the asphalt; but, he did still have the presence of mind to swing both arms around and lock onto her legs with his hands. With a heave (with his face still buried in the street), he flipped Lil end over end up and over the breadth of the street, and some thirty feet into the air. Completely disoriented, she was still screaming when she slammed into the slumped remains of a department store, nearly smashing the building to the ground.

He pulled loose from the street, and stared at the smoking pile of debris. "I suppose that would be the opposite of a shoplifter..." he muttered under his breath. The joke drew a groan from the voice.

Alloy alighted near him. She looked completely restored. "Is she gone?"

JaBrawn shifted his sight to aurasense. Lil's dull, sickly glimmering spirit was still visible, though shifting and unstable. She was dying. He shook his head. "No... but she is going. I suppose we should--" he had turned his head to look at Alloy, and was quite clearly shocked by what he saw.

That was why he had heard a voice in her mind that wasn't hers, and that was why he now saw in her aura...

"JaBrawn..." came the singsong voice of the woman-in-his-head. "Someone familiar draws near."

He turned, saw movement...

...and then only blackness.

She seemed to blanch at first at his wound, which should have been fountaining blood; instead what she saw was a hard, crystalline quartz-like substance under his fingers, and shards of the same stuff were scattered here and there on the street. "The guy's not even human," she muttered darkly to herself.

The woman raised both hands over her head, and a pulsating spiky globe of energy instantly began to coalesce between them. It grew larger and brighter, until it was nearly a yard across.

"Well," JaBrawn thought, "it was fun while it lasted." He could have gotten up, dodged out of the way maybe--but he had suddenly grown very weary of everything. He had grown weary of his task, weary of the thankless humans, weary of this haphazard life he had been tossed into. He did not really want to die, but he did not really have a serious problem with dying, either.

"Whoever you are," he said matter-of-factly, "you're about to make a mistake."

She hesitated, glaring at him under the luminescent sphere lightly captured between her palms. "I think the only mistake I made was not taking you out this way when we first--" and then she was pitched forward, slamming into JaBrawn headfirst. Something very powerful had apparently struck her from beind.

They ended up in a rather affectionate-looking embrace, with her astride him. The gargantuan energy bolt she was about to unleash had winked out of existence. JaBrawn looked down at her. Her eyes were closed but not peacefully; in fact, they were clenched with pain, as was the rest of her body. JaBrawn decided that the safest thing to do was to not move--it had worked against the metal-clad lady, so it may work for whatever had struck her as well.

He felt her stir against him. "Don't move," he whispered. He saw her lift her eyes to him. "I don't know what hit you, but it hasn't left yet."

"I'm hurt," she muttered.

"How badly?"

"My back feels like its on fire."

JaBrawn was tempted to inspect for a wound, but, of course, such a maneuver would be spotted. "Just lay there a moment. I think whatever it was is coming nearer."

And come nearer it--she--did. The woman he had dispatched earlier was sneering down at him, completely mended. Her eyes fairly streamed with that vaporous green light. "I know neither of you are actually out, much less dead."

JaBrawn saw no reason to continue the ruse. He sat upright, rolling the metal woman off of him. "Right you are," he said. "You seem to have recovered quickly."

The other woman chuckled--kind of. "Not so much at first. I was hurt pretty bad, but I found that the gifts given to me and the other guys could be taken from them, if they didn't know it was happening."

JaBrawn's brow furrowed at the thought. "Taken??"

She nodded, actually smiling. "I just had to touch them and sort of... not want to die. To take what they had to keep alive. The first one I took fixed me up and then some; the second pumped me up even more."

JaBrawn lay with as much of his mass against the street as possible, as his body broke down the substance of the asphalt into atomic particles with which to restore himself. He felt it working, but it would take some time--probably more than he had.

"And now what?" JaBrawn asked. She started to step forward and answer at the same time. "What is your name, anyway?"

She stopped, puzzled by the question. "Lil."

"Lil. What do you seek to do now? Kill me, as your benefactor asked?"

She paused, her brow knitting prettily. She seemed definitely more alive, fuller yet lithe, brimming with energy that she had never before known. Her hair was close-cropped and hugging her skull and her clothes were matted and worn; somehow, though, it added to her appearance, not subtracted. She seemed raw and new--unique. "I guess I have to. He said that he'd kill me if I didn't."

"And if you did?" JaBrawn asked.

She beamed, showing a gap-toothed grin. Instantly her visage returned to that of a broken, used-up human being. "He'll give me even more power."

JaBrawn slowly shook his head. "For some reason dear--I sincerely doubt that. I think that as soon as you 'kill' me, he'll kill you. You'd be a threat to 'him' if you got much more powerful as it is." A thin, latticed column of his body had taken shape at his shoulder. Soon it would bear the outline of his arm. If he could just keep her talking.

She shook her head this time. "No, he's not like that. He's generous."

JaBrawn raised his brows. "Ah. Generous enough to kill you if you fail?"

"You don't understand."

"So far, that is the most sensible thing you have said."

She paused again, staring at him. "If you knew him, you'd understand."

"Obviously I do know him, or of him. Otherwise why would he have me killed?" He knew that this was not an airtight argument, but it would draw out the conversation further, giving him that many more seconds to heal. He chanced a glance down to his new--comrade? She was staring up at him, flat on her stomach. From the split-second look he had given her, he could see a large, rippled patch on her back--from where the other woman had hit her with, well, something.

"You know him?"

JaBrawn snapped his eyes back to the aggressor. "I don't know. Who is he?"

"He never told us his name; but he looked like one of us."

"Us--you mean human?"

She shook her head. "No, I mean he looked like someone who lived under a pile of newspapers or the shell of a Pontiac. He looked like one of..." she shrugged, "Us."

His arm was half-finished, a quartz limb shot through with holes. It was directly in her line of sight; he was unclear as to why she did nothing. Perhaps because she didn't fear him injured or whole.

"Sorry, but," she said, stepping towards her again, her eyes flaring emerald, "I have to finish this."

JaBrawn prepared to roll out of the way, shifting his weight to his good arm; when a bolt of yellow light intersected the woman, causing her to rock back on her heels. The damage it did was superficial--her shirt was burnt most of the way off, and her hair was smoking; but, it was enough for JaBrawn to lurch to his feet and slam a foot down hard enough to generate a shockwave that knocked her off her feet. He seriously doubted that any lasting damage had been done, but just maybe it could give him--them... the leverage needed to end this.

He looked down and to his right. The metal lady was on her knees and one hand, the other clenched into a trembling fist that was still pointing where the other had been standing. She was breathing heavily, and her face was a mix of exhaustion and agony.

"Thanks," he said.

"Oh of course, no problem at all." She replied with a sarcastic lilt, something like the voice people used when telling 'blonde' jokes.

"You're both going to &!#%& die for that," came a growling voice dripping with fury.

He didn't know what to do, so he simply sat on his haunches, and awaited for her to recover, which she began to do almost immediately.

As the metal woman stirred back to wakefullness, JaBrawn again attempted to pierce her mind and divine who or what she was. This time, he didn't even get through her outer barrier before the voice accosted him again.

"I will not ask again," it murmurred in a raspy, hollow voice, "Leave, and do not return." It shoved him out abruptly, leaving him gasping from its strength.

"I knew it!" The woman snarled. "What were you attempting, eh?" She sat up, scowling at him. "Mind control? Soul-stealing?"

JaBrawn raised his hands again (fat lot of good it did for him previously) in an attempt to show that he was not up to anything harmful. "I was merely trying to see who you are. Obviously you are not an evil being, but neither am I, so why don't we--"

"Oh SHUTUP!" she said, and threw a fist in his direction. A halo of golden light instantly formed around her hand, and discharged in his direction, all in less than a second.

He dropped to the ground and the beam lanced over his back, scalding him. His facade of clothing shimmered white where the heat was greatest, then faded back to the illusion he had raised.

He rolled to his right as another blast struck right where he had been laying. Another barely missed him as he continued to roll through a gaping burnt-out hole in a building. It struck the cracked and crumbling foundation, which caused the entire structure to shudder and vibrate. JaBrawn got to his feet, but not in time. Half of the building collapsed on him.

"Oh. Great." JaBrawn muttered seconds before being buried under hundreds of pounds of brick, moldy plaster, and wood.

Her face still pinched with anger, the woman made her way to the man in the street, who had stopped moving. She leaned over and put what seemed to be an area of unblemished gold to his chest. She gritted her teeth at the sound coming from him. Nothing.

"D*mn him," she mumbled as she walked down the street to the others. They were groaning in pain. One had a broken leg, the other had his arms wrapped around his midsection. "Broken ribs, no doubt." She said. Finally, she inspected the woman lying in a crumpled heap by the building across the street. She was still unconscious, but breathing normally. Her hands were twisted and swollen, her wrists blackened and horrid looking.

She stood and glared at the spot where he had been buried, and felt a fury rising in her, a wrath that made her eyes light like twin stars. Purposefully, her feet carving divots of asphalt from the street, she strode over to where he must surely lay, hoping he was still alive so she could extend his suffering--small payment for his crimes, but still better than a quick death.

As she neared the pile of rubble, she focused the rage inward, letting it condense and intensify; then, she focused it out to her hands, causing them to be sheathed in blinding halos of destructive energy. Grabbing chunks of masonry and throwing them over her shoulder with ease, she searched for his battered, and broken body.

His kind evoked memories... memories that she struggled to keep crushed down and in control, since she could not bear to truly forget them. Memories of her father--and what happened to him. Memories that made her decided to use this new skin, this outer shell that she could not remove for good, instead of a means of self-pity. After she discovered that she could not take the thing off, she almost... she almost...

She stomped on the thought, making it retract from her awareness and coil up in a mental pen where it slithered and snapped with the other thoughts she dared not entertain.

"I hope you're still alive you b**tard, so you can be made to pay for what you did to those people." She heaved another chunk of destroyed building clear, and found one of his hands. It seemed intact. Deciding that maybe his first punishment should be a badly dislocated shoulder, she seized it and yanked on it as hard as she could.

A geyser of bricks and plaster suddenly erupted, and something that must have weighed as much as a semi but was only the size of a coconut slammed into the side of her head. She was barely aware of streaking throught the air, and even less aware of snapping an ancient lightpole in half. She skidded and skittered to a halt almost half a block down the street.

JaBrawn stood and shook the debris from his shoulders. In spots on his body, white marble showed where the crushing weight of the building had damaged him, but even now they shrank from sight.

He had not wanted to do what he did, but the woman had to be made aware that she was not attacking the enemy; that what he did to the people lying in piles of pain around the street had deserved what they had got for attacking him--did they not?

He strode out into the street, peering down the sidewalk for her still form. Surely she would be out cold by such a punch. He looked and looked for her.

She wasn't anywhere to be seen.

Suddenly he was knocked off his feet, spinning wildly. He slammed back first into the ground. There was a smell of melting asphalt, and chunks of sidewalk and street were hitting the ground all around him. He went to push himself up with is right hand, and discovered that it had been blown off at the shoulder.

He lifted his gaze to her, where she was standing in mid-air, her hands on her hips again in that arrogant posture.

"Are you ready to fold yet, you unruly moron?" She asked him.

"Funny," he replied as he pressed his left palm against the crater in his body where his right arm had been. "I was going to ask you the same question."

JaBrawn was the first to admit that he was still rather naive; being able to benchpress a city bus or convince a roomful of scientific geniuses that they were actually a bunch of chihuahuas did not in any way make him streetwise, or even just plain wise, at that.

So, naturally, he was taken completely by surprise when something slammed into his back hard enough to fracture his body and send him through most of the same building he had just bounced off of only minutes before. He crashed through the outer wall, the skeletal frames of two inner ones, and finally came to a stop when he bounced off the inside of the opposite wall he entered.

Sitting up painfully, he shook his head, causing a comical cloud of dust to form around him. Looking up, he sought out his attacker, thinking it yet another of these augmented humans, though far more powerful than the others he had so far dispatched.

He was again surprised when a woman who seemed made of molten sunlight slipped through the air and alighted on the ground not quite ten feet from him, her fists poised rather arrogantly on her hips.

"I think you have some explaining to do," she spoke dryly.

JaBrawn gritted his teeth. "I have some explaining to do? Why did you attack me? I don't even know you!"

Her face was masked behind a backwards flaring helmet of some sort, ending in leaflike points. Though it seemed solid metal, the material did bunch up over her brows when she scowled at him.

"I saw what you did to those people back there. They were helpless, and you attacked them mercilessly. Need I really explain my actions now?" She quirked a brow.

JaBrawn sighed and shook his head. "And of course, you must be right. It couldn't possibly have been that they were some kind of augmented humans whom had been sent to kill me, and I was merely defending myself. Oh no, that simply could not be." He raised a baleful glare to her. "You have to be right, because you decided on a course of action that would be considered very, very rude if you were wrong."

She blanched slightly, but covered it up quite well. "I... could not assume that you were under attack. Three humans unconscious and one having a seizure on the street. What was I supposed to think?"

JaBrawn slowly got to his feet, causing her to step back with one foot and bring her fists up. "Easy," he murmured, his broad hands held palms out. "I'm just getting up. Oh, and to answer your question, you were supposed to think, 'wow, I really don't know what's going on here... I think I should holler at that guy and find out.'"

Inside his skull, the voice snickered.

The scowl on her face deepened. "I will not be mocked. By anyone. For any reason. Even if you are right." Without a word she streaked towards him, burying her fists in his chest.

JaBrawn still wasn't quite ready for it, but he was at least facing her this time, and dug his heels into the torn tiles of the flooring. She knocked him off his feet and through the wall he had just ricocheted off of, but he was mostly unharmed.

She rocketed up into the air, forty or so feet over his head. "How brave of you," he muttered loud enough for her to hear. "Hit and run tactics. Very effective."

"Don't try and trick me, you big oaf. You know perfectly well that you're just trying to get me on the ground so you can wrap one of those big ugly mitts around my pretty lil' throat."

Actually, he was thinking nothing of the sort. He really did think that it was cowardly to smack someone and then run. "Oh? What a clever little girl you are," and fired a thick tendril of his mind towards her skull. He encountered a great resistance that was difficult to penetrate... and even when he did slip through, he found the mental fortitude extended throughout her mind. Despite this, he noticed that she had gone stock still in mid-air.

Then, strangely, without any inquiry on his part, a deep, raspy voice said to his mind, "You do not belong here. Leave."

It made no attack on him, but the consistency of the mental barrier he was trudging through went from mud to nearly hardened tar. "Leave," the voice repeated.

"I only want to stop the fighting, if you would just listen..."

"LEAVE," the voice said again, and he was catapulted from her consciousness like a cannonball. He staggered from the effects, but she was in worse shape; though only the equivalent of a severe mental hiccup, when one's concentration is required to stay airborne, a hiccup is all that's needed to cause that focus to waiver--and send you plummetting to the ground.

He actually made a leap to catch her, but was too far away. She impacted heavily on her side.

A great, golden figure glided in the arms of the sky. She seemed made for this, an iconic angel wrapped in a shimmering skin of metal that seemed to shine like the sun.

Other airborne heroes whizzed by her occassionally. One even stopped for a moment, to exchange pleasantries. She chatted with her briefly, and then was off to a section of sky over Paragon City that she had claimed as hers to protect.

Though appearing as such, she was hardly an angel; moreover, the gleaming skin she was was clad in was not her own. It was an alloy she had devised almost a year ago--one that she had not yet been able to duplicate; however, it had so far, not been necessary. The stuff grew back on its own.

As far as she could tell, it drew mass from around itself for repairs, and it gleaned energy to give her flight, superhuman strength and the ability to cast energy from the sun. Unfortunately, she could not remove it.

She had tested it, and tested it, and tested it again in her father's private laboratory. She never had to really worry about running out of the stuff (due it self-regeneration), so she exhausted every possible application she could think of. Mice and rats were rejected by it--it would coat their terrified little bodies only briefly, before gently expelling them from its embrace, and molding itself back into the spherical shape it always took when at rest.

It almost seemed intelligent; but how could it be?

So, in the end, only a single test remained: human. She could not conscientiously bring herself to ask any person, friend or otherwise, to submit themselves to such an unprecedente procedure, so the only test subject was the tester herself.

She had stood nude in the glass-walled clean room, with only the softly pulsing golden globe--a yard or so wide--as the other occupant.

Taking a strand of her hair, she had cautiously prodded the dense, thick material. No reaction.

There was really nothing else left to do.

She slipped her hand into it up to her wrist. It felt warm and liquid--almost soothing. She remember smiling, in spite of everything. She pushed her arm in up to her elbow, and slowly opened and closed her hand within it. It seemed to throb and slowly swirl around her touch. More than ever, she believed it was alive.

Then, like some alien amoeba from a decades old horror reel, it had slid up her arm, around her head, and flowed to her feet, completely engulfing her. She couldn't breath, see, or hear, and panic quickly set in, causing her to thrash around and fall to the ground.

As if sensing her distress, she suddenly had a mouth and nose to breath through, ears to hear through, and eyes with which to see. Panting with fright, she tried to move--and could do so with ease. Incredible ease, as when she pushed against the floor to sit up, she launched from a prone position, to a standing one.

The alloy had wrapped itself around her completely, covering her in a golden sheath of gleaming, seamlesss metal. She tentatively explored her new skin, and found that her head now sprouted two fins that met over her nose, and ended at points on either side of her head, giving what mush have been a somewhat helmet, somewhat decorative headgear.

Panic slowly ebbed away, and wonder replaced it. Her name was Ursula Gardner, daughter of biochemist Marcus Gardner. And she had become something beyond anything either of them could have ever imagined.

She ceased her reminiscing for a moment, reducing her speed and altitude to begin her wide, introspective spiral around the slums that she had taken under her wing.

The leaning husks of the few remaining skyscrapers threw vast shadows across the smaller buildings, crowding around their foundations like children under a dying guardian. In some areas, it looked like a war zone--and at one point it was. She had missed it of course.

As had her father.

She closed that file and slammed it shut in the drawer... though of course, she could'nt lock it.

Looking down, she saw something strange--a large man in a trenchcoat peering at another, smaller man in the street. A vagrant, by the looks of him. Without warning, the smaller man fell over, whilst the larger fellow continued to stare at him.

After a few seconds, the smaller fellow went into convulsions.

She was smitten with sudden anger, but decided to close the distance slightly and determine exactly what had happened. She saw the big man make a cellphone call--odd. Then, as she drew nearer, she saw the two other unconscious men on the street, and the woman obviously hurt and curled up on the sidewalk next to a very large split in the wall of the building near her.

She had seen enough. Tapping into the vast reserves of her "skin," she streaked towards the massive villain's back like a spear thrown from Zeus himself.

CRUNCH

The brick crumbled into dust. He let it drift from his hand to the ground, and lifted another from a pile that was once the corner of an old factory.

CRUNCH

Again he slowly opened his hand and let the orange powder slip from his palm. Again, he picked up another.

CRUNCH

"Oh how far you've come, puppet. Last week you were threatening a family. Now... much less."

JaBrawn did not respond. Her voice had been the solitary voice in his head for the past five days. He had not given up yet; but he had withdrawn into himself. He had wandered from street to street, alley to alley. Finding little evils everywhere, but slowly realizing that his presence tended to cause more strife than it would ever solve.

Ever.

Big meaning for a rather small word.

His meanderings had slowed six days ago, and stopped altogether a day after that. He had rooted himself on one knee near the factory for the remainder of the time, reducing the huge pile of bricks down to a stack hardly larger than he--moving only when the pile was beyond his reach.

CRUNCH

"You are so humorous, construct. Here I was thinking that you were progressing somewhere reasonable, and not only have you pushed yourself away from that, you've pushed yourself away from everything."

CRUNCH

"I at first thought you were trying to solve something--to find meaning in the destruction of something already dead."

CRUNCH

"You could do the same to the humans--and many other things. Grab them by their skulls or whatever they use to cart their brains around, and smash the life out of them... with one hand."

CRUNCH

"Is this your surrogate? You can't kill them, oh no, your creator would tug your life out of this ridiculous shell before you could even savor the kill; so you crush something unneeded, something unnecessary; but, it's not nearly as good, is it? That's why the endless repetition."

CRUNCH

"You are at an existential impasse. I wonder then, why you continue to exist?"

CRUNCH

As he knelt there, mired in his seemingly pointless task, a car turned the corner at the end of the street, about sixty feet from him. This section of the city was a nearly lifeless array of abandoned buildings, like a deserted nest of termites. The only residents were the ones who truly could live nowhere else.

The only cars were rusted out hulks that did little more than keep the rain off whomever had taken them for shelter. If one was here, running, then someone from somewhere else was paying a visit, for whatever reason.

JaBrawn sensed the vehicle, of course, and its peculiarity. It caused him to pause only for a moment.

CRUNCH

He felt her smile. "Ah, so there is some kind of recognizable sentience there still, eh? Yes, I agree. It is odd for a vehicle to be out in these godforsaken barrens. I wonder why it is here?"

The automobile paused at the T-intersection, then slowly turned left, coming down the street towards JaBrawn. He still did not cease his activities, repeating the same process that he had completed thousands of times in the last five days.

CRUNCH

The car stopped, midway between where it had made the turn, and JaBrawn. He did not lift his head or his eyes to see it, but he felt the distinct presence of four souls in the vehicle. They were human.

No--that was not right. They were almost human.

Again, he paused.

"Once more I agree, marionette. A very odd thing. I wonder if you should stand up, make your presence known? They may be up to deeds nefarious!" At this she laughed at her own wording, a descending metallic giggle that would have set anyone's nerves on edge.

All four doors opened, and three men and a woman stepped out onto the street. They were dressed in various streetwear, some of which were in disrepair. The driver was wearing threadbare and stained cargo pants, and a faded dark green sweatshirt, with the hood shrouding his features.

He turned and murmured something to the others. They nodded, and slowly walked around the vehicle to meet him on either side.

"Oh my. I think they were specifically seeking you. I wonder what it could be that they want?"

The four of them advanced towards JaBrawn in measured, almost cautious steps. The driver was the furthest in front, seemingly the leader. His gloved hands were at his sides, but they were curled into fists.

"Is this how it ends, JaBrawn? Like this? Beaten to pieces on a street whose name has been lost for a generation, near a factory that harbors nothing more than rats and cobwebs?"

The quartet had spread out and continued to do so as they neared JaBrawn.

"I had hoped for so much more, construct. So much more from a creation like you."

"And why is that?" JaBrawn said. It was the first thing he had said in almost a week. "Why do you hope for anything from me at all?"

This time, the voice was silent.

CRUNCH

JaBrawn nodded. "No reason is as good a reason as any," he said, and got to his feet, causing a shower of russet shards to drop from his clothes. This action caused the others to instantly freeze. He noticed that their eyes glowed a dull green, the color of an evergreen at dusk. "Hello there. You don't look very friendly."

The woman, a gaunt stick of a thing wrapped in cracked leather and denim, hissed at the man in the sweatshirt. "I thought you said he hadn't moved in a week?"

"He hadn't," came the reply.

JaBrawn stood impassively, massive hands relaxed at his sides. "You've been watching me?" They said nothing, but it was hardly a necessary question. "Well I hope you've gleaned as much from what I was doing as I did."

"Get him!" The leader said, and all four of them charged him from a different direction.

JaBrawn leapt straight up in the air, reaching for the rusted and dead limb of a streetlamp, its business end missing for decades. His hand caught it, and, with a twist, he wrenched it from the concrete. He then landed feetfirst, the four scattering so as not to be caught underneath him.

He swung the thirty foot length of thick steel pipe in a 180 degree spin, knocking two of his assailants down the street, where they sprawled painfully.

The woman and the leader jumped nearly twenty feet away, evading his attack. They were clearly endowed with strength beyond any normal human's; how was another matter.

He tried to read their auras, and found a lump of dull color wrapped in something else, something... vile. It didn't answer much, but it did lend credence to the possibility that these were normal people gifted by someone or something else.

The two down the street were out cold. The other pair split apart and came at him from either side. He swung the pipe from over his head in a whistling chop. The woman dodged nimbly to the side letting it sunder the asphalt harmlessly, and wrapped her arms around it. Gritting her teeth, she lifted, and JaBrawn's entire body came off the ground.

The pipe, half-rotted with rust as it was, bent, but as he came back down, the man thrust both fists into his chest, sending him flying across the street in a horizontal cartwheel. He slammed into the wall of some other sort of factory, cracking its surface and causing a rain of masonry to fall from its crown.

He lay there, unmoving. The man and woman stood nearby, poised with their fists raised to waist level, feet spread, waiting for him to rise. He didn't.

The woman cackled. "Man--if this guy beat, you know, him, I wonder if we could?"

The other seemed incredulous. "Well, uh... let's take one thing at a time, okay?"

JaBrawn, who had merely been laying still and listening--after all, he breathed only to simulate life, and so, could imitate death just as convincingly--sat upright again. "Who, is 'him?'"

The woman croaked an expletive and launched into the air, her fists held in front of her. JaBrawn, both unhurt and prepared this time, braced one foot behind him, and caught her by her fists with one hand. She screamed out loud as the bones in her wrists and forearms--fortified as they were--splintered. Whipping her around behind him, he smashed her into the building, the crack his body had put in it doubling in length. She fell to the sidewalk, unconscious.

The man regarded JaBrawn with fear, the strange throb in his eyes almost imperceptible, but definitely there. It looked familiar, though greatly reduced.

"Who sent you?" JaBrawn said. "Is he the same 'him' that you were talking about?"

The man's face ran with sweat. "I can't say... he'd kill me if I did." He paced sideways, slowly moving towards the car. "Besides, I don't even think I know who he is."

"Really." JaBrawn said. "Well then, I suppose we should finish this little tussle off, eh?" He loosed a filament of his mind, and sped it towards the man's forehead. It intersected the normal fabric of every living being's consciousness, but instead of having the consistency of a cobweb like it usually does, this was like a sheet of cloth. With a jab, he was through.

The man twitched and fell over, as he was in midstep.

JaBrawn touched here and there, illiciting what information he could. Not much, really. He was a vagrant, as were the others. His name was Marvin. He had... wait... there was something at the core of his mind. A dank, peristaltic lump of something malignant. It was like a vast, woven rope of sewage, wrapped around and around itself. From it, tendrils of dark green and brown infested Marvin's mind. It was from this infestation that he was granted his newfound gifts, but it was at great personal cost: JaBrawn could see the vile seed was sucking everything out of him, devouring his spirit like the maw of a whale scooping up half an ocean of krill. It would soon kill him.

JaBrawn attempted to wrap the thin rope of his invading mind around a coil of this mass, and pull it loose. It reacted instantly and violently, shoving his influence away.

Growling in his head, JaBrawn shoved more and more energy into this mindthread, until it was a great, braided cable of presence. He wound it tightly around and through a loop of the malignancy, and tugged with everything his mind could summon.

There was a moment of indecision, and then everything unraveled. The core of sickening evil unknotted and vanished, leaving a gaping hole wherever its presence was. This sudden evacuation caused a tumultuous rushing in of Marvin's spirit, as it slammed shut on the vacuum that remained.

The result was disastrous. The man's mind tore itself to pieces trying to fill what the other thing had left. He collapsed in the middle of the street, convulsing.

JaBrawn withdrew his mindthread, and peered at him. His eyes were rolled back in his head, his face slack and lifeless. JaBrawn could sense a slow, arrhythmic heartbeat and the drawing of half-breaths--but the man was hardly what you could call "alive."

He stood stock still and stared at him, pitying the creature though he had attempted to kill him. Whatever had done this to him must have either baited him with the power so he would accept its influence willingly, or, it had forced itself on him, and threatened him with death should he not do what was ordered.

Villainous, heartless cruelty either way.

He pulled the cellphone from his pocket, and dialed the police. He filled them in shortly, and hung up. It would be nearly an hour before they arrived; it always took longer for them to come into this place, because they had to back up their backup due to the high crimerate.

He had seen hardly any crime here other than the forgotten humanity of its few inhabitants.

"So. You're back?" She asked, out of nowhere--as usual.

"I never left."

"You never spoke to me."

"That does not mean I wasn't here."

She paused. "What was with the bricks?"

He smiled. "I was trying to find two that were the same." He looked over at where he had spent the last five days. "I couldn't. There are some left, but I know that I won't find them there, either. I won't find them anywhere."

Again, she paused. "Why were you doing that?"

He stood up and faced where the sun would rise. "Because I realized that everything is like that, alive or dead. They are all different. The only time they are the same... is when they're dust."

He could sense her disquiet. It made him happy, for once.

Several harsh, cracking sounds echoed off the side of an old hotel. The unmistakable sounds of gunfire.

The bullets mostly bounced off his chest and neck, though a few did chip flecks of his substance away. The damage was less than trivial, it was a non-issue--and the terror it caused on the face of his attacker was priceless.

JaBrawn snapped out his hand, catching the tall man who had demanded his valuables at gunpoint by the throat, and lifting him off his feet with laughable ease. He dropped his gun of course. And he gurgled a lot.

"I take it I was not what you expected, hm?" JaBrawn smiled at him, as his hands, nearly as large as JaBrawn's, tugged uselessly at his grip.

Her voice popped into his mind. "Why not kill him?"

JaBrawn bristled and his jaw clenched. "You know as well as I that that's not what I'm supposed to do. Now leave me alone, for once!" She clucked at him. "Oh my noble little manform. Bound by the laws of a meaningless species. How marvelous." She giggled. Again.

The man, who did actually manage to choke down a breath or two every now and then, suddenly found his wind cut off altogether as JaBrawn tightened his grip. "He would certainly not be missed... would he?" JaBrawn said. The would-be-thief's eyes widened. At first JaBrawn thought it merely because no blood could escape his skull--then realized that he had quite possibly just said what he had thought, outloud. With a start, he opened his hand, and the human collapsed to the concrete, clutching feebly at his throat. He was as beyond fear as he was gratitude. He was simply fighting to rein back the life that had very nearly been taken from him.

JaBrawn was stunned as he realized this. "I... I almost did it. He was right there. He was right there at the door--because of me."

"Yes," she murmured, "he was. You had very nearly erased a human who tried to kill you, and has most likely tried to kill others. I wonder what made you hesitate? Mercy?" JaBrawn's fists clenched.She was silent a moment. "Love?" she whispered, "was it love for this pitiable thing?" Her voice dripped with something other than reverance.

He considered her words. Love. What possible use was that word for him? Yes, it was the garden that all good things were planted in, but... him? He shook his head. He could not have been built to harbor such trifles. It was nonsensical.

The cretin had recovered himself to the point where he could look up at the man he was perfectly willing to kill for whatever may have been in his pocket. Even nothing. "Wh... who are you? I've never seen no hero dressed like that."

JaBrawn rolled his eyes. Why did they always say that? "Stay right there," JaBrawn muttered, as he fished a recently purchased cellphone--an embarrassing device that he had soon discovered to be invaluable--out of his pocket. "Yes, I have a criminal that needs to be placed under arrest. No, he is quite complacent," he glared at the man, who shuddered under his eyes. "Yes, I think a confession will be waiting for your officers when they get here." He replaced the phone in his pocket, and squatted on his haunches, still staring at him. "There will be no further problems, will there?"

He shook his head, terrified.

JaBrawn suddenly found the man's fear, so entertaining only seconds ago, to be distasteful. "I'm not going to hurt you, as long as you behave yourself." The man nodded, shaking from head to toe.

"As soon as he is released, he will find a gun, and do this again. Only this time, he will shoot first just to make sure he can kill his victim," came her voice.

JaBrawn mulled that thought over. It was possible, yes. Sometimes punishment in prison only bred more resentment for the outside world, and pushed those under its iron curtains even further from the productive side of society. Yet... to not punish this man was even a worse travesty. He grunted with irritation, and the man whimpered--and quite obviously wet himself.

JaBrawn leaned over, scowling. "Listen to me; if I tell the police that you did not fight back once I had gotten the gun away from you, and that you didn't fire a shot--in fact your gun is empty--if I do that, you have to do something for me." The man swallowed, and nodded once. "I want you to serve your time peacefully, with no problems, and no resentment. After all, it was your actions that landed you there. Then, when you get out, find me." The thief's eyes pinched slightly, troubled. "Don't worry," JaBrawn rumbled, "I'll be around." The fellow blinked twice, and then nodded again. The wail of sirens and the familiar twirling lights down the street, drew near. JaBrawn picked up the gun, pulled the clip out, and disassembled it and the bullets, drawing their molecular structure into himself, discarding the unneeded particles into the air around him, causing dancing lights and sparks."There. It's as if they were never there. Oh--yes, I almost forgot." He reached out to the thief, who lay stock still with disbelief, and dissolved the traces of burnt gunpowder from his hands and clothing. "What's your name?"

He swallowed again, and croaked out a single syllable. "Rick."

The alien hero sat back and regarded his choice of action, as the first squad car pulled up. A stocky police officer hopped out of the driver's side. Two more from other cars joined him shortly. They all switched on ther flashlights, pointing the harsh beams at the immense bulk of JaBrawn, and the supine form of the thief.

"Well," said the first, "looks like a nice catch, hero. What kind of scumbag is he?"

JaBrawn continued staring at Rick. "A desperate one, I think." He turned and smiled slightly at the officer. "Don't worry, gentlemen. He was very cooperative with me, once we had a chat. I think you can expect the same."

The officer nodded. "Did he have a gun?"

JaBrawn proffered the weapon to him. "An unloaded one. Though I of course, didn't know the difference."

They restrained him and carted him off, though Rick, stunned, stared at JaBrawn all the way to the car. They were gone seconds after, leaving a strange vacancy--one JaBrawn could not define.

She chimed in unbidden, as always. "How merciful of you. How useful do you think such a gesture was?"

JaBrawn sighed and got to his feet. "Oh I'm certain it was completely useless, as you had said. I must be out of my mind."

"I never said it would be useless."

He paused."No." He grumbled. "I guess you didn't," and then pushed off into the twilight arms of the sky.

DeMezry had not, of course, vanished.

It had disappeared, but there is a slight difference between "vanish," and "disappear"; to vanish means to leave someplace completely. To disappear just means to not be able to see something any longer.

DeMezry's blood, which had vaporized when loosed into the air, had slipped between microscopic cracks in the street, the bricks behind where its body had ceased living, and even wrapped around particles floating in the air. A great deal of its essence had perished before it could recombine, but there was still more than enough left to create a reasonable facsimile of the being it was.

It was weaker than before; lesser. It had lost its hold on all the souls that it had housed at its flanks, those arcane energies it had stolen from their vessels--their bodies. They had streaked from its grasp the moment JaBrawn had "killed" it, each off to its own destiny. They were no longer its to control--it could not twist their collective wills into its barbaric reflection, or combine them into hellish, barbed tentacles to defend itself with. They were gone. DeMezry, was not. It was definitely weaker, yes--but far from nothing.

It gathered and wrapped its smoky, brackish tendrils around its memories of self, latticing them into bone, chording them into muscle and tendon. In seconds, it had a humanlike form. Now, only to decide on an appearance.

The mass it had lost was significant. It had been far taller than a man in its last incarnation; an appearance it had moulded over decades to represent the beautiful in both masculinity and feminity, only to horrify its victims by befouling such a visage. Revenge demanded a different touch this time.

DeMezry would kill JaBrawn of course, and it didn't want the cosmic marrionette to know it was coming until it was clutching at its life as it was sucked from from it.

It. He. JaBrawn was a he. DeMezry had thought it small-minded for JaBrawn to choose a gender. After all, it had not. It enjoyed the confusion such a look sowed. Confusion was often fear's appetizer, and of course, fear made its meals all the more delicious.

It pondered the possibilies for a short while. And then decided that any sort of neuter appearance would make it far too obvious. JaBrawn was its antithesis in every way, so why not in form as well? With a small wedge of the power it had left, DeMezry became a woman. The loss in mass made the ruse even more convincing. It stood just over five feet, rather short even for a human female. It saw itself in the fragments caught by a window frame, and smiled.

It. She. It was a she now.

She had to admit, she found a certain flavor in being this creature. No doubt, JaBrawn would not expect such an adversary. Perfect.

She was hungry. When she was made, she was not endowed with the ability to harness sustenance directly from the stars. She had said as much to JaBrawn.

She ambled, nude, down the street, where she could make out the uncertain light of a garbage can fire. Two figures, both filthy, trash-smeared humans, looked up from warming their hands, to a beautiful, silver-haired woman wandering around in twenty-degree weather with no clothes on. One gaped, the other grinned from ear to ear, obviously pleased with her presence, and her situation.

She smiled back. She was much, much happier to meet them.

It was a lovely spot, really. The rain was falling in blinding, freezing sheets, the power flickered on and off down the street, and JaBrawn Marshada was beginning to wonder why he was there, staring at several people go about their dreary, waterlogged day.

"I still don't understand why I'm here," he said for the thirteenth or fourteenth time to the voice in his head, "nothing has happened. Nothing is going to happen."

He heard the female in his mind murmur a slight laugh, bemused by his shortsightedness. "And, as I've said every time you've asked me that question, it is the nothing that I want you to notice."

JaBrawn harrumphed, and a thin whip of a teenage girl looked his way, panic in her eyes. He sighed softly and smiled. She was unconvinced as she trotted off, as upset as all the other homeless people in the neighborhood that had recently acquired JaBrawn as their newest tenant.

He had spent the better part of four months here, watching the humans in the poorer slums and projects of Paragon City known as a "hazard zone." He had not yet lifted a finger to help a single soul, though there was never any real evil to right. Once, a putrid scab dressed in more filth than flesh, attempted to steal a cart from an old woman who had lost most of her mind long, long ago. JaBrawn did not even need to intervene. The woman stomped on his instep with the one high-heel she wore, and then swatted him in the groin with a cane.

He did not get up for quite some time.

Slowly, the sun sank in the West and the stars come out, winking into their place in the vast twilight tablecloth like old souls at suppertime.

Still, the voice revealed nothing. JaBrawn's patience was inhuman, but this was more than even he could stand. "Allright. I'm done." He turned from the cracked foundation line he had had one foot up on for the last 18 hours, and picked a random sidewalk to head down.

"Where are you going?" Her voice came, calmly curious.

"Wherever I da*n well please," he replied gruffly.

"I haven't told you anything yet."

"I noticed."

"There is more to see."

He stopped and fumed, wishing he had the woman in front of him so he could snarl at her more effectively--the mental equivalent was more comical than anything else. "More NOTHING, you mean?!"

The voice laughed angelically. "Excellent! You've finally picked it up!"

JaBrawn blinked. "I could have told you that I have been staring at nothing for the last day... a day ago."

The laughing subsided to giggles. "Well then you should have, because all I remember is pity for those pathetic wretches that have been wandering around their pointless lives out in the rain."

"You mean the humans?"

"I saw nothing other than they and rats--cosmically, there is little difference."

JaBrawn clenched his jaw. "Well, genetically there is little difference between humans and marmosets, but if you were to hold one next to the other..."

"...the marmoset would make more sense," she finished for him.

"I wasn't going to say that," he said stiffly.

"Which is why I said it for you," she smiled an invisible smile.

"I don't NEED your help for anything."

"Oh? I wonder if that's really true."

He looked around him. No one was watching. Coiling the thick, artificial muscles in his legs, he leapt skyward to the apex of a three story church. "I don't see why you even wonder. My creator--whom I am unsure even exists anymore--seems to think these creatures are more than nothing. Else why would she bother creating me? Supposedly I am to be a protector of these humans, and all else that is just and right."

She pounced on his tone. "You sound like you're reading about how you're about to have a surgery that will involve removing your genitals."

Silence.

"It's true... I am unclear with what she finds so alluring about them. They seem so... limited."

"Mmm. We all have limits. Even you."

He peered down through the raging torrent. It was odd, looking down at rain, as it fell. "I know this, but my limits are nowhere near what a man's are. I will live forever, even if this body is destroyed. I have many times their strength and speed as well as abilities they will never have, and..."

He stopped because she was laughing again. Just when he thought she was actually here to soothe him, she would shatter his ego. "You're like a child trying to tell a puppy how he can eat his dinner with a fork, and the puppy cannot." She snickered. "Yet they still both eat."

He sighed miserably.

Huddled under the eaves of a fire-gutted department store that had long-since given up its former days of consumer glory, was a young mother, and her son. The child was reading to her out of a schoolbook. They were both smiling as they learned.

JaBrawn realized that he was not nearly as rich as he would have liked. The silence of the voice spoke her agreement with this far louder than any harsh words would have.

JaBrawn did the only thing he really could do. The unexpected. He shifted into hypersense and everything slowed down to about a third what it should be. This ability taxed him, but he needed it. As soon as the gaping circular jaws of the tentacle were near enough, he curled one hand into a fist and shoved it down the thing's throat up to his elbow. The energy drain began in earnest now, but before it became even slightly more than annoying, he whipped his hand across his body yanking DeMezry off its feet and smack dab into the corner of the structure to his right.

DeMezry's forehead took the brunt of the impact, and split open nastily. Instead of red blood, a greenish ichor leaked out that quickly evaporated into a mist of lighter color. JaBrawn noticed that the energy drain vanished.

It glared menacingly at JaBrawn, and he felt the culling of his vitality return. Its lips split in a snarl. "You'll pay dearly for that you son of a--" but JaBrawn's hand was still embedded in the tentacle, and he was gripping its innards fiercely. Hopping to his feet, he yanked DeMezry from where it was sprawled on the ground straight towards him, and, when it was an appropriate distance away, struck out with his fist directly in its nose. Pale, freezing skin split, and more thick, jade fluid was released into vapor. The infernal creature went rocketing away from JaBrawn to crash backfirst into the same building, cracking the stucco finish and causing a cascade of mortar to fall as dust.

The teeth of the tentacle's mouth were scoring JaBrawn's flesh, but the sensation of losing energy was completely gone.

DeMezry appeared to be out. The split down the center of its forehead actually seemed to distort its skull--its right half looked off-center.

JaBrawn let his grip slacken, and the tentacle fell to the ground. He had to make sure the thing was dead, or at least incapacitated enough for him to deliver it--where, exactly? The Midnight Squad, probably. They often dealt in the arcane.

He took a few tentative steps towards it, and leaned over to inspect it for some sign of life.

As if a nightmare, DeMezry lifted its head and peered at JaBrawn with one glowing eye, as its other had been exinguised like a popped Christmas bulb. "I hope to whatever gods there are that you wouldn't think me so easily dispatched as that," and both of its hands locked around JaBrawn's throat with speed beyond belief.
JaBrawn's hands flashed to the creature's slender forearms, which were endowed with strength far beyond their frail appearance would suggest. After only a few seconds though, it was clear that JaBrawn was the stronger of the two.

Slowly, DeMezry's grip slackened as JaBrawn's massive fists crushed down on inhuman flesh and tendon. Slipping his neck free from its grasp, he placed one foot on the malign being's chest, and yanked brutally backwards, still holding on to its wrists. There was a sound like someone tearing a head of lettuce in half, and DeMezry was suddenly, violently, armless--and shrieking in rage and agony. Swamp-colored blood geysered in every direction, quickly turning into a thick, foul-smelling vapor that the wind seemed unable to move.

Inside its anguish, DeMezry was completely stunned. Never in its centuries of life had anyone or anything wounded it so grievously. "How dare you do this to me! Do you have any idea who I--" its oaths were cut short as JaBrawn paired its arms in one hand, and swung them with tremendous force at its head. It spun around brutally as tendons and vertebrae snapped and pulled free, and then hung limply to the side.

JaBrawn stood for a moment, as he sucked and released great chestfuls of the cold night air--and then marveled at this action as he did not truly need to breathe. "How dare I? Quite easily, it would appear." He dropped his gruesome weapons, still standing in a cloud of its misty vitality.

The da*n thing had to be dead now. You don't get your neck separated from its home and then decide to keep fighting--even if you still could, who would want to? Right?

He leaned over again, and poked it in its chest. Nothing moved. He did it again, and, disgustingly, his finger punctured its flesh as if it were a burnt piece of paper that had yet to become ash. The destruction he caused quickly spread, causing a very disturbing collapse of its entire body.JaBrawn stepped back involuntarily, as it disincorporated even further; the flakes it had become changing into dust, and then nothing. In seconds, it was over. There was not a single trace--other than the destruction--that DeMezry had ever even been here. The greenish fog had even vanished.

He was uncertain as how to proceed. He was still very new to the city, and waltzing into a Hero Organization (TM) with news that he had fought and defeated basically a life force vampire who summarily crumpled into nothing, would be difficult to absorb. Of course--this is the same city that had entire cordoned-off neighborhoods crawling with cyborg drug addicts and aliens.

"Ah to the hells with it," he muttered.

A soft, tinkling female voice that wasn't there a moment ago, sprang into his head. "Maybe that's what it wanted."

JaBrawn ducked low with his fists held out, and turned in a quick circle. "Who are you?"

The voice giggled. "Just someone who's been watching. And unless you plan to pummel your own skull with those" she must have meant his fists, "I would drop the defensive stance."

JaBrawn was furious. "What gives you the right to take over my mind?"

"Right? The right of ability to do so, I would suppose. And I haven't taken anything other than residence in your head."

He gripped his skull and howled in anger. "Get out!"

"No," came the simple reply.

He stumbled around the alley, kicking over trashcans and cracking concrete as he asked, demanded, and finally begged for release. She was silent throughout the tirade. When he had finally given up and just sat in a seething heap amongst the trash of the street, she spoke. "JaBrawn, I will vacate your mind when certain conditions have been met. This is what will happen, and there is nothing you can do to change it. If at some point you simply cannot withstand this any longer, I will end your life quickly and painlessly. Do not assume any arrogance that I cannot do such a thing. A tug on this lifeline of energy or that," she plucked some string of being in his core that caused a disturbing vibration, "and you end. Is this at all unclear?"

He was beyond annoyance--he was absolutely livid with frustration. "What is it you want? Why are you doing this?"

"I will reveal neither. We will simply walk your walk in this life, and see what situations arise." He could not believe this."I think this will make for an interesting relationship--no?" she said, giggling again.

JaBrawn got to his feet and clenched his fists. "What 'walk in life' do you want me to take, and why?"

"Oh... let me think on that a whiles," she said. "Just go on with whatever you wish. I'll await inspiration."

He walked out on to the sidewalk, where a small family was huddled inside an old car, attempting to escape the cold. They were all staring at him, terrified. He started to walk away, but could feel their eyes on his back. He whirled around, his teeth bared like an animal. "What are you staring at, pathetic mortals!"

The two children vanished out of sight in the car, while the mother fiercely gripped the father, who continued to stare. Defiantly. Fearfully, but defiantly.

Roaring with anger, he stomped over to the rusted hulk of machinery, and clamped his hands on either of the front fenders, preparing to rip the car to shreds or heave the entire thing into the air and dump its terrified patrons to the street where he could give illumination on how to act around superior beings.

"Superior beings?", came the voice. "You? In what way are you superior? To your creator and her ilk, your improvements over that unwashed and sickly congregation are so insignificant it's not even worth laughing over."

JaBrawn's chest was heaving, his face locked into a wrenched and twisted portrait of fury. He glared at the man behind the steering wheel, whose look of defiance had disappeared quite quickly.

"You... really... shouldn't... stare," he said through clenched teeth.

The man nodded and swallowed, his body quaking.

JaBrawn released the car, his hands leaving prints in the body as a normal man's would if he were to grip a quilt and then let it go without smoothing it out. He turned and walked away, blessed with company he had neither asked for, nor appreciated.

What a night.

With shrieks of glee, the eyes coallesced into two massive sets of oculars set on the ends of treetrunk girthed tentacles, hovering on either of Demezry's hips. Beneath the eyes, a sphincter like mouth squirmed open, with concentric rings of triangular teeth something like a shark's, if a shark had teeth that went from its lips to its gullet.

JaBrawn shifted his sight into aurasense and recoiled at what it revealed. The creature was a horrific blend of malign colors that swirled and bubbled grotesquely, like looking down into a boiling septic tank. It did him no good to see the thing like this, so he moved his sight back to normal. "Why kill me? I don't have any sort of sustenance you can live on."

The mouths and eyes lifted away from their master on their thick serpentine trunks, their "skin" looking both wrinkled and wet, like leeches left out in the sun. "Oh, I don't know," DeMezry said. "I might as well try, no? You may be even tastier than she. Regardless, I am not exactly beholden to your mistress--destroying such a loved creation would be delicious in a completely different way, yes?" It smiled, showing tiny pointy teeth the color of rot, and the tentacles reared up and away from it, some ten feet over it's head.

JaBrawn quickly looked up. The building his back was slowly putting a dent into was a hundred feet tall at least, the ones to his flanks nearly so. Way too high to jump. The only real way out was through DeMezry and its playmates. "So! On with it then," it said through a gleeful grin, and thrust one of the creatures at JaBrawn with frightful speed.

JaBrawn stepped to the side and lashed out with his hand held in a rigid chop. It smacked the thing to the ground and caused DeMezry to grunt in pain, though something else happened; he felt a touch of something drain a sliver of power from him. The stars almost as quickly replenished it, but that left a cruel question: If he couldn't touch it, how could he kill it?

DeMezry recovered quickly. "You see? It might hurt a bit when you hit me, but I take from you some of your strength for the effort. At absolute best, we will suffer a gruesome stalemate. " He retracted the first tentacle, and then swung the other one as a brutal bludgeon. JaBrawn ducked down under it and blinked with concern as it shattered the brick wall of the building to his right like it was styrofoam.

DeMezry cackled again. "I know that you glean strength from the stars; I have no such luxury. I must take it from the flesh of others." It struck again with both tentacles, causing JaBrawn to leap over them whilst smashing his feet against their bulk, then bounce off of them and landing to DeMezry's right, about fifteen feet in front of it. "However, I can store as much as I like for as long as I like. It's been years since I've expended any serious amount of it--so show me a good time, little puppet." It then pushed off the ground and drove both of its feet in quick succession into JaBrawn's midsection and chin. The alien construct spun backwards in mid-air and smacked his head into the pavement. It stunned him more than anything else, but it gave DeMezry ample time to bring both of its tentacles to bear on him. "Well," it began, a tickle of something sad in its voice, "I had hoped for better than this," and drove a tentacle directly towards JaBrawn's face.

The scream woke him from his meditation like a sting from a hornet.

It came from somewhere below him, though the thick fog and darkness shrouded nearly everything from his sight. He rushed to the side of the warehouse he had been standing motionless as a gargoyle on for the past three hours, and peered down into the midnight gloom. A few faded streetlights were all that were revealed. This neighborhood, so close to the cordoned off sections of the city, received little care and maintenance from the city workers; not that he he blamed them, cops were just uniformed victims out here.

He shifted his sight to that which can find auras like you and I find moths dancing with a porchlight--nothing. Then he heard laughing. A man. Two men. Several men.

He decided that dropping in on them from above would be a bad idea. He was not certain if the victim would end up under his feet, or, really, if there were any real victim at all.

He ran to edge of the wall perpendicular to the street where the scream seemed to have come from, and threw his feet over it. Climbing as quickly as quiet movement would allow, he descended the four-story building, and landed on the sidewalk. He froze, and played his eyes slowly around the area. No movement. There were a myriad of auric trails, but since he didn't knew whose was whose, such information was meaningless. He shifted back to normal sight, and walked as silently as he could to the corner, and listened. There was laughing again, though it was more subdued.

He first made certain that no streetlight behind him would cast his shadow or turn him into a silhouette, and then slowly looked around the corner. The darkness was bottomless there. Too dark, really. Some sort of unnatural blackness called from who knows where to hide who knows what. He flipped his vision over to see if he could determine what sort of auras were hiding under this cloak, and his jaw clenched involuntarily when the dark turned into a great, clawed hand of something almost impossibly evil. This shroud was so powerful, it managed to hide all but a pair of glowing green eyes, that peered down at something at its feet.

Whatever that thing was, it whimpered weakly."Please," came a hardly audible female voice, "please don't..."

The laughing returned. And now it sounded more like children than men. "Please?" came another voice that was both without gender or seeming malice--almost a pleasant sound. "I have already granted your wish. You are dying. That's what you wanted, yes?"

A short, soft sob followed. "No... no, I don't want to die..."

The laughter returned, rising in pitch until it sounded like a chandelier wrenched from its screws by some freakish wind. "Oh, if you hadn't wanted to die, you wouldn't have filled your veins with this," JaBrawn couldn't see what the apparition was referring to, but whatever it was caused the girl to slip into a fit of quiet sobbing. "You see? Your wish called me here. And here I am. If this were not true, why didn't you try and run?"

She paused, weeping. "I don't know, I don't know..."

The laughing, which had receded somewhate, rose again in volume and intensity. "Of course you know." The eyes dropped, like the creature was kneeling. "You've always known we would meet. That this would bring me here, to take away the last of you that you could not take." It stood back up. "Now. Open your arms to me, you little [censored]. What small amount of satisfaction I may yet get from your soul will hardly quench the thirst standing here and talking to you has bred, but I will be damned again if I get nothing at all."

JaBrawn had heard enough--in fact, he was ashamed he had stood and listened for so long, for it may be too late to intervene. He stormed around the corner, his overcoat lifting under his speed, his teeth bared and his eyes glowing with anger and disgust. "VILE THING! I DON'T KNOW WHAT IN ALL THE HELLS YOU MAY BE, BUT YOU WILL NOT HAVE THIS GIRL!"

He was wrong. Not only was he right on time, but the being was actually surprised that something could even see it, much less be inclined to attack. The veil of darkness vanished, and JaBrawn could see it as it truly was.

It was impossible to tell if it was male or female--it's face and body had neither of the sex's extremities and both of their subtleties. It's arms were long and slender, ending in hands that were tipped with cruel hooks. It was wrapped in a mantle of ragged black that seemed to suck up all light and swallow it away to someplace where light could actually die. The surprise that it might have felt was not showing on its face, but its eyes glowed bright and emerald as it looked at the man charging down the alley at it.

JaBrawn closed the gap to hardly an armslength, when the thing leapt over him gracefully, landing on its feet behind him. JaBrawn jumped, hitting the dead end wall with his feet, and then somersaulted backwards, facing it. It tilted its head as it steepled its fingers, peering at him curiously. "So. I had thought you would have given up by now." A slight smile played across its neuter lips.

JaBrawn's brow twitched. "Given up? Given up what? And what makes you believe you know me, we've never met before--my loss, I'm sure."

The creature turned a pointed foot away from him. "I had heard that another celestial Pinocchio had been made and sent to Earth--I had no idea that it would actually work this time." It tilted its face the other way now, as floating gossamer sheets of silver slowly shifted about its head. "You do work, do you?"

JaBrawn growled. "What are you? My maker never spoke of a being such as you."

It chuckled and hundreds of tiny eyes popped into existence in the air around its legs and hips. They all squinted in mirth as the chorus of laughter he had heard earlier returned. "Well of course she didn't! What good would that do you? In a million years, neither of us would have ever thought you and I would--" it paused, and looked skyward at nothing. "OOOoohhh... dear me... of course!" And it clapped its hands, roaring with laughter, which was harmonized by a thousand more laughing voices. It was nearly deafening.

Something to JaBrawn's right screamed. He remembered suddenly that the girl was still here. He turned to look--and almost recoiled in digust. She looked sixty but was probably more like twenty. At her feet was the object the creature had showed her earlier; a syringe. She had slumped aginst the brick building behind her, her eyes sunken and unseeing. She was dead. JaBrawn turned back to the thing. The laughter died down and was replaced by what sounded like an entire theatre going Awwwww... "Oh, now look what you did. Sure, she was teetering like a drunken blind woman over the brink, but she had a good tasty drop or two in her." It's eyes narrowed, and it smiled.

JaBrawn stared at it, unbelieving. "Who... what, are you?"

The chuckling returned... though it sounded like a roomful of giants. "I'm both, really. Some think I'm Death, but I'm far too personable to be that. My actual name is DeMezry. I'm not supposed to hand it out to just anybody, but that doesn't really apply to you. Even if I were to let you live, you're not exactly an ordinary fellow, are you?"