Two Scenes 02

Title: Two Scenes
Subtitle: Kanon vs Canon: Behemoth
Author: Harper Kingsley
Genre: science fiction, superhero, action
Link to part one: Two Scenes 01

The sounds of battle were getting closer and he found himself bracing for that moment when Behemoth crushed him and the civilians that depended on him. Hearing the adults hushing the panicked children above him did not make him feel any better. There were lives depending on him.

Seth kicked up his speed, praying that he could get them away before the fight reached their location. He could hear the shrieks of the children as they were jostled around inside the van, but he didn’t have the wherewithal to worry about them. He had to focus on getting away.

He thought he could feel Behemoth’s hot breath on the back of his neck, that was how close Behemoth was getting. It seemed the giant villain had spotted the van and had decided to go after the kids.

Seth darted left, metal grinding under his fingers as he fought to keep the van from flipping over. He could hear the children screaming, a near-continuous chorus of terror, but he was doing the best he could for them just by keeping them out of Behemoth’s grasp.

There was the flicker of motion and he dodged in time to avoid Behemoth’s fist. There was the loud rumbling crack of breaking concrete. It was lucky that blow hadn’t landed on the van.

Seth tabbed his com. “This is Sunfire. I have Behemoth riding my ass. Where’s that back up? Over.”

“They’re coming on you hot, Sunfire. Jamba is approaching your three o’clock and Red Flare is coming in on your ten. Maintain your approach, then duck out of Behemoth’s path so Red Flare and Jamba can handle him. Do you copy? Over.”

“I copy, over,” Seth said. There wasn’t much else he could do. He just hoped the two superheroes reached intercepted him before Behemoth did.

Please don’t turn me into pâté, he prayed. He didn’t want to be one of those heroes that ended up with a closed casket because he’d been turned into Sunfire pulp.

It was with a surge of relief that he caught sight of a hint of red cape zipping past his left side. “Hey Sunfire, move that pretty ass,” Red Flare called out cheerily.

“I’m trying,” he said. “Just let me get out of your way and you can do what you do.”

He felt bad leaving her to handle a monster like Behemoth, but he had his priorities.

“Keep those kiddies safe,” she said. With the coms bringing her voice right into his ear, it felt as though she were standing beside him. “And get yourself out of here, kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” he whined just to hear her laugh. More seriously, “Thanks Red.”

“Please, you’re going to make me blush. Take those kids and go, Sun,” Red Flare said. “Keep yourself safe.”

He hated that it sounded like goodbye, but she’d always had a bit of the precognition. It wasn’t an ability she advertised widely–“You always gotta keep a little something back, kid. A hold out weapon for when shit gets heavy.”–but he’d known her well enough to have learned some of her secrets.

Back when he’d first started out, she’d been a mentor to him. And somewhere along the way she’d filled the mom-role his own mother had ignored. He wasn’t enough of a kid to let himself be full-on adopted by her, but he wished he could have been. Life would have been different if she’d been there when he’d desperately needed a mom.

“Be careful,” he wished.

“I always try,” she said, and it was no kind of promise. “Get yourself out of here, Sun. I see Jamba coming. We’ve got your back.”

The terrified sobs of the children was the only thing that kept Seth moving. Without them counting on him, he never would have left Red Flare behind.

He left her behind.

The sounds of battle followed him as he flew as fast as he could toward the Sector 7 shelter. He had to close out passive-listening for Red Flare and Jamba’s frequency, unable to listen as their professional chatter turned to pained cries and dying shouts.

He felt like a coward, but he couldn’t listen to them die. Not when he was helpless to save them.

He was in sight of the emergency shelter when Red Flare pinged him direct. He already knew what was coming when he accepted her call.

“You always… always made me proud,” she gasped, her voice thready across the line. “You grew up… to… to be a fine man. Sun… Tell my mother… I…” She broke off with a harsh cry of agony.

Tears he couldn’t wipe away blurred Seth’s vision. “Red!”

Silence was his only reply.

A handful of the second string heroes tasked with guarding the civilians swarmed out of the shelter as he landed the van. He crawled out from under the front bumper and left them to unload the children.

He launched himself into the air and flew as fast as he could to Red Flare’s location. He wanted to believe she’d simply lost her com. He wanted to believe that she was hurt but alive. He wanted to believe a lot of things.

And then he saw what was left of her–A smoking crater plowed out of the pitted and cracked street. Pulverized bone showing through the red ruin of her body. So much blood that he couldn’t see any trace of light brown skin. Her head was a smashed mess of white skull, curly black hair, and the shattered ceramic of her mask.–and he knew his hopes were a lie.

She was gone.

He screamed so hard that it hurt his throat, and he threw himself at Behemoth with everything he had. There were no coherent thoughts left in his head as he punched and kicked and tried his best to tear Behemoth apart with his bare hands.

Behemoth roared his irritation. One of his massive hands closed on Seth’s left leg with a popping-crunch. The pain barely had a chance to register before Seth was being whipped through the air to smack his shoulders and the back of his head into the pavement, once, twice, three times.

It was like a child playing with a superhero action figure. Gripping the doll tightly by one leg and slamming it into the floor before flinging it away to move on and play with other toys. Only Seth was human and his leg was a mangled mess, and for a few minutes–lying there in the rubble, blood seeping out of his cracked skull–he was dead.

* * *

It was strange to know that for some period of time he was actually dead. No heartbeat, no breath sounds, and possibly no brain function considering how much damage he’d received. For him, in those moments, everything stopped.

Time restarted with the sound of his screams ringing in his ears. He didn’t know where he was or what was happening. Memory was a confusing blur of half-remembered fragments and shutter flash images.

His leg was agony and his head was a sloshing liquid kind of pain. He barely turned his head to the side before throwing up, sour bile splashing back up against his lip and cheek.

Seth choked and gagged, whimpering as the shudders running through his body jostled his leg. Helpless tears streamed from his eyes as he weakly tried to roll over and found that he couldn’t do it.

Over the copper penny smell of blood jammed in his nostrils there was the scent of burning gasoline. Spots drifted across his eyes and he could barely see. Not that there was much for him to look at where he lay in the rubble strewn street.

Distantly, if he focused passed the buzzing in his ears, he could hear the sounds of battle happening on the other side of the city. He was glad it was far away as he was in no condition to fight.

Seth laid on the hard ground and wondered how it had come to this.

What wrong fork in the road had he taken to end up here? He didn’t know; he just wish he could go back and live things differently.

“Oh shit, he’s awake,” Teen Steel’s voice came from his right.

Seth blinked, but his eyes were hazy and hard to focus. “Mmph,” he moaned.

“Don’t move. Medics are on the way,” Teen Steel said. His hand was a sudden pressure against Seth’s shoulder, ensuring he didn’t try to get up. Seth wanted to tell him that moving around was the last thing he wanted to do at the moment, but speaking was too hard.

“You’re gonna be all right, man. We won’t leave you,” Teen Steel said. Seth felt him as a large blur crouched next to him, but it was his voice that kept him anchored. “You definitely know how to scare the crap out of everybody. Is it something you practice, or does it come to you naturally?”

Seth managed to quirk his lips upward, just a twitch.

“How’s he doing?” Pulsar’s voice came from somewhere above and to the side.

“He’s conscious and he seems to be tracking us.” A gentle squeeze of Seth’s shoulder. “I guess there’s no permanent brain damage.”

Seth focused on the feel of that hand and kept breathing. “Br’n d’mage?” he asked, the words gummy in his mouth.

“Yeah man, sorry to tell you this, but you were dead when we found you.” At Seth’s whine, Teen Steel gave his shoulder another comforting squeeze. “Don’t freak out. A couple zaps from Pulsar and you came right back. You’re going to be fine.”

“S’re. Easy fer you say.” Seth blinked, trying to bring the world into focus, but nothing happened.

I feel like crap, he thought. A laugh choked in his throat, sounding more like a whimper.

“Sh, you’re going to be all right,” Teen Steel soothed. He’d taken his right glove off and his hand was warm against Seth’s forehead. “It’s just a broken leg. There’s no reason to cry about it.”

“Not cryin’.”

“Of course you’re not.” Teen Steel carefully swiped his fingers across Seth’s cheek, not commenting further on the moisture he found there.

Seth wanted to close his eyes, but Teen Steel urged him to remain conscious, the medics were coming.

Well, just because you don’t want me to die, he thought.

He laid on the hard street and kept his blinks even and slow. The pain in his leg was an always there presence, a stabbing agony that reached such a crescendo his brain decided to shut it off, much to his relief.

He was lucky to be alive. He would hold to that.

* * *

Being trapped in the hospital was his own personal hell, but it was better than being dead, so he’d take it. Even if the nurses and the doctors were constantly poking at him and he had to wear a stupid paper-thin gown. He was alive, and that was a very good thing.

Seth refused to ask for a list of the dead. There was nothing he could do about it at the moment, and he thought it better that he focused on his own healing. He wasn’t in the proper head space to deal with the deaths of his friends.

There was plenty of time for grief later. When he was out from under observation and he could slink off somewhere to curl up alone and have an unselfconscious cry.

Behemoth had been defeated, but the cost had been much too high. Star City was a ruin and the cost of repairs were going to be astronomical.

Even while not having paid attention to the news, Seth had overhead people talking about the fate of Star City. There was a push to have the city permanently shut down as the repairs were going to be unreal. Other people were —-militant—- about the idea of getting back to where they belonged and fixing Star City up better than before.

Seth didn’t care what happened to Star City. He just hoped to never see the place again. It had eaten up too many of his friends.

I hate Star City, he thought.

He closed his eyes and relaxed into his mound of pillows. He’d been having a hard time getting to sleep, what with the screams of the dying reverberating in his ears–one of the perks of superhearing. Now that the worst of the injured had been treated–drugged into quiet insensibility–the sounds of the hospital had quieted considerably.

He thought he’d finally be able to sleep. If he didn’t end up dreaming about Red Flare again.

Seth heaved a sigh and concentrated on shutting his brain off. He was exhausted. The whole experience with Behemoth had been a disaster.

He made himself go to sleep.

/END

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