(HN: TGS AU(My take). Chapter 15)
The heavy hammer, forged from inky fury, sliced through the air with a whistle, nearly crushing Nicky’s skull. Roth reacted on pure instinct—his neural overclocking kicked in fractions of a second before the weapon could brush his hair. The boy leaped, executing a mid-air flip to evade the crushing tool. The heavy mallet struck the concrete of the factory yard with a dull, bone-shattering thud, sending out a web of fractures.
Landing in a crouch, Nicky didn't waste a single moment. Activating his ionized sprint, he literally vanished from sight, leaving behind only an azure streak of sparks and the sharp, pungent scent of ozone. The speed was blistering. Peterson froze in shock as Nicholas closed the distance in the blink of an eye. The air around them trembled with the density of the energy. Nicky locked onto Aaron’s forearm with a death grip, forcing his arm high up toward the gloomy sky, and instantly sent a short, painful shock through his fingers.
"Kh-h!.." a gasp ripped from Aaron’s chest.
Peterson’s muscles convulsed violently, his fingers involuntarily unclenched, and the heavy, drawn weapon crashed to the ground. Before it could even impact the concrete slabs, the materialized hammer dissolved into black flakes and vanished into thin air as though it had never existed. But Nicky didn't stop there. Utilizing his own momentum, he yanked Aaron toward him, seized him by the collar of his jacket, and drove his knee hard right into Aaron's stomach.
The blow, backed by the colossal kinetic energy of the sprint, was devastating. Aaron doubled over, his eyes widening from the piercing pain. He was completely stunned, staring up at Nicky from below, deeply shocked by how fast his former best friend had become. Roth's speed made every single one of his thrusts destructive, and the electricity, even at its weakest, seared nerve endings worse than hot iron.
Aaron desperately gasped for air, fighting off waves of nausea. He snapped his head up and, preventing Nicky from pressing his advantage, swung his left hand in a wild backhand. The spinning fist forced Nicky to hastily retreat, breaking the distance. Breathing heavily, Peterson staggered to his feet, spitting dark blood onto the concrete.
Nicky froze, his own heart hammering wildly in his chest as his body began to slowly heat up—a side effect of retaining the energy.
“Have to watch the current... I need to try and minimize the damage,” flashed frantically through Nicholas’s mind. He remembered the physics of his cursed gift all too well: even a small amount of voltage, sent down the wrong path, could stop a human heart. He didn't want to kill Aaron. Not him.
Aaron wiped his lip with the back of his hand, his brown eyes narrowing dangerously.
"I’ll admit... your speed is impressive. You’re ionizing the air with your electricity, aren’t you?" he wheezed, giving a twisted smirk.
Without waiting for an answer, Peterson closed in again. His right fist shot forward, aiming for Nicky’s jaw, but Roth was faster once more. Catching the hand flying at his face, Nicky spun on his heels, pulled the other boy’s forearm over his shoulder, and threw Aaron over himself with force, slamming him hard on his back onto the ground. The concrete echoed with a dull thud.
"You guessed right, Peterson," Nicky panted, looking down at his fallen opponent.
“Damn... he’s reacting too fast. He must be speeding up his reaction time with his charges, overclocking his nervous system,” the thought burned through Aaron as he lay flat on his back, trying to claw back the air forced from his lungs.
Nicky leaned down sharply, grabbing Aaron by the shirtfront, intending to pull him up and finally force him to talk normally, but at that exact moment, Peterson’s fist whistled through the air dangerously close to his nose. Self-preservation instincts worked flawlessly—Nicky leaped back like a diving bird, breaking the distance.
Aaron sprang to his feet like a coil, his movements jerky and malicious. On the move, he reached into his jacket pocket, whipping out a folded piece of paper—a new drawing. A second later, a heavy iron chain materialized right out of his palm, tearing through the paper base. Putting all his rage into the swing, Peterson hurled it at Nicky, who was still in the middle of his extended leap. With a dry metallic clank, the links wrapped securely around Roth’s ankle.
"Gotcha!" Aaron roared, pulling the chain toward himself with all his might.
Nicky lost his balance. Utilizing his immense physical strength, Aaron began to hurl him from side to side like a ragdoll, battering the last of the boy's strength out against the ground and surrounding structures. But Roth wouldn't be himself if he gave up that easily. Screaming in pain, he forced his bio-electricity to flare up, issuing a mental command:
The shadow companion came alive instantly, weaving itself beneath Nicky’s falling body into a dense, resilient cushion that significantly cushioned the next hard impact. Immediately after, Nicky surged a powerful pulse of current down the chain, forcing Aaron to drop the weapon and break away.
Nicholas’s head spun slightly, colored spots dancing before his eyes. Overcoming the dizziness, he ran a weak charge down his own neck, using the electricity as an artificial stimulant to force himself back into focus. The internal heat was becoming unbearable; his muscles hummed like high-voltage wires. Time was critically short—his body was slowly turning into an overheated boiler.
But Aaron gave him no respite. He was already holding the next sheet. Throwing it directly beneath his boots, Peterson activated the drawing: powerful metal springs tore out of the ground with a screech. Compressing, they acted like a catapult, launching Aaron forward at immense speed. Raising his fist for a crushing blow, he flew straight at Nicky.
Roth managed to react at the very last second. Thrusting his hand forward, he tried to intercept the flying Aaron using Andrew's extended shadow tendrils. But it was a trap. A deceptive maneuver that Peterson had calculated in advance. At the absolute last moment, Aaron twisted in mid-air, evading the shadow binds, and his foot connected directly with Nicky’s jaw in a snapping, picture-perfect uppercut.
Roth's teeth clicked together. Fortunately, Andrew had reacted a fraction of a second faster than his master, managing to weave a small, coal-black shield right before his chin, which absorbed most of the direct kinetic energy of the hit. Even so, the sheer force flipped Nicky through the air. Aaron had already landed and, raising his hands—onto which he had fitted materialized, spiked brass knuckles mid-flight—was preparing to drive Roth into the concrete for good, bringing his weight down onto the boy’s unprotected back.
Nicky coordinated his fall with astonishing precision. Planting his palms against the ground, he arched his entire body and delivered a massive counter-kick backward with both legs—right into Aaron’s chest. Peterson was thrown back considerably, and his drawn springs vanished beneath his feet with a soft hiss.
Aaron went rolling across the dusty surface of the factory yard, barely braking with his elbows and knees against the hard concrete.
Finch, who had been crouching in ambush behind a pile of rusted crates this entire time watching the brawl, was terrified out of her wits. Her heart was pounding somewhere in her throat. This wasn't some regular school fight. This was horrific, feral, and monstrously cruel. Two of her classmates were mauling each other with the persistence of enraged beasts.
"Well?!.. Satisfied?!" Nicky yelled furiously, breathing heavily and wiping blood from his cheek. His voice cracked into a rasp.
"...Do you hate me yet?" Aaron only grunted hollowly in response. He struggled to his feet, wiping away fresh blood pouring from his broken nose with his sleeve. The detached, numb resignation with which he surrendered to his internal hell terrified Nicky to his core.
Nicholas went rigid for a second. The fury inside him was suddenly replaced by a dull, crushing emptiness. He slowly deactivated his ionized sprint, letting the azure sparks around his body die down. Dropping his shoulders, he silently, step by step, began to approach his heavily breathing friend, hesitantly extending an open palm toward him:
Aaron stared at Nicky’s outstretched hand with a wild, bubbling rage. It was as if this concern were the ultimate insult to him. He struck Roth’s hand away with a backhand:
"Are you an idiot?! Stop worrying about me, damn it! Fight me! Hate me!" Peterson shrieked, a deep-seated, soul-tearing agony distinctly cutting through his voice.
Nicky silently stepped back a couple of paces, his thoughts tying themselves into a tight knot. He clearly didn't understand the situation.
“Hate me? Aaron... Aaron wants me to hate him so badly? But... for God's sake, why?”
And then, it was as if a switch flipped in his mind. The most terrifying puzzle piece of the day fell into place.
“Could this entire display of aggression, all this madness... just be a twisted way to force me to hate him?” Nicky thought.
Despite the physical pain, a strange sense of relief washed through his chest; it grew a little lighter. Because if this was true, then Aaron didn't actually hate him. He was merely playing the role of a ruthless bastard, breaking himself in half just to push Nicky away once and for all. Granted, Nicky still didn't know the underlying reason for this self-sacrifice.
"...A-Aaron?.." he called out softly, his voice cracking.
"I said... SHUT UP!" Peterson bellowed.
With renewed, tripled strength, Aaron threw himself at Nicky. Roth had almost no time—he barely managed to reactivate his neural overclocking and crank his ionized sprint to maximum capacity. Evading a direct collision, Nicky spun in mid-air and delivered a heavy, slicing axe kick straight down onto Aaron’s head. The blow landed tangentially, but with such force that Peterson’s head snapped sideways unnaturally, and the boy nearly crashed onto the concrete.
Barely maintaining his footing on buckling legs, Aaron slowly turned to face Nicky. His left cheek was swelling rapidly, his lip was horribly torn, and thick crimson streams ran down his chin.
"Fine then... if that's how you want it, I'm not holding back anymore!" Nicky hissed through his teeth, finally accepting the rules of this insane game.
He dropped into a rigid combat stance, keeping his eyes locked on Aaron. Peterson mirrored him. In the next second, Aaron’s brown eyes flashed menacingly with an otherworldly, toxic-green light—he had activated his extrasensory perception. Now, he was going to read the very structure of Nicky’s aura, calculating the trajectories of his high-speed attacks before they could physically manifest.
Both teenagers stood frozen opposite one another, waiting to see whose nerves would break first. Aaron subtly felt for the remaining drawings in his pocket. There were only a couple left. He desperately did not want to resort to the horrific, grotesque arsenal of the creatures living on the darkest pages of his sketchbook, but employing regular entities for tactical supremacy was necessary.
Nicky, meanwhile, was frantically developing an entirely new technique on the fly. Aaron could materialize any objects, animals, or weapons. At any given moment, he could pull out a shield, armor, or something larger, meaning all of Nicky’s simple, fast strikes would eventually become useless. He needed something fundamental. Something capable of shattering any defense. He had to charge the attack somehow... Store the power.
And then, Nicky’s eyes widened. Eureka! His own body—it was the perfect organic capacitor. If he stopped mindlessly scattering sparks, he could gradually accumulate the bio-electricity continuously generated by his nervous system and muscles over the course of an intense fight. He could literally lock the charge inside his own tissues. Yes, it would raise his internal temperature to critical heights, his blood would literally boil in his veins, but if his calculations were correct, at the moment of the final blow, he could unleash this entire colossal reserve of energy into a single point—his fist. It was a lethally dangerous, insane move, but he had no other option.
Finch held her breath in her hiding spot. The very air, thick and sticky, distinctly smelled of ozone and burning. There was a strong sensation that they were rapidly approaching a point of no return.
“...Alright. Need to be on my guar—” Nicky didn't have time to finish the thought before Peterson bolted.
From the torn sheet in Aaron’s hands burst the silhouette of a massive, powerful kangaroo. The creature instantly scooped up its creator with its powerful forepaws and executed a colossal leap upward, soaring over the factory yard.
Nicky tilted his head up: the attack would come from above. While in the air, Aaron materialized a heavy tower shield mid-flight. The kangaroo kicked off this shield with immense force, crashing down toward the spot where Nicky had just been standing. Thanks to his overclocked neurons, Roth managed to leap aside, finding himself in an extended, unsupported jump.
"Barely made it..." escaped his lips.
But Aaron understood perfectly well that giving a high-speed opponent time to think was suicide. He didn't let Nicky land.
Realizing that he was practically stripped of maneuverability in the air, Nicky tried to quickly weave a dense shadow shield directly ahead of himself using Andrew. However, Aaron anticipated this move. Repeating the trick with a newly created physical shield, Peterson kicked off it with his feet in mid-air and, within a fraction of a second, appeared right behind the falling Nicholas.
Nicky's eyes and Andrew's coal-black slits widened in horror. The shadow lunged backward, trying to shield its master, but it was too late. Aaron’s powerful, crushing right hook, reinforced by the brass knuckles, caught Nicky square in the solar plexus. The shadow only slightly cushioned the impact, and Nicky went flying backward with a whistle.
With a dull, painful crash, the boy slammed into the chain-link fence. The moment he managed to open his eyes, he saw that Aaron had already mounted a powerful warhorse materialized directly beneath him and was charging at him at full gallop.
“...Damn! He won't even let me catch my breath!” Nicky thought in a panic.
The massive drawn animal charged like a battering ram, ready to trample Nicky beneath its hooves. At the final instant, Andrew worked flawlessly: weaving together behind him, he turned into a solid brace from which Nicky could launch himself, soaring upward over the charging rider. But with insane persistence, Aaron instantly dispelled the horse, activated the springs beneath his feet, and launched himself up after Nicky. Locking onto Roth’s ankle with a death grip, he spun him through the air around his axis like a sling and hurled him with all his might toward the warehouse structures.
Nicky flew backward through the air. Andrew reacted a millisecond before catastrophe struck, unfolding behind him as a massive coal-black cushion and taking the horrific impact against the trunk of an old, sprawling tree.
Struggling, swaying, and coughing, Roth pulled himself to his feet. Every single one of Aaron’s blows, backed by his drawings, was monstrously, unnaturally powerful.
"...I know I’m stating the obvious, but you’ve gotten a lot stronger and more technical," Nicky spat dark saliva.
"Shut up!" Aaron snarled back.
"What? Is it hard to accept that I still know you too well, huh?" Nicky took a step forward, his azure eyes gleaming feverishly. "Face it, Aaron! I can read you like an open book!"
"...I could say the exact same about you..." Peterson responded hollowly, his aura rippling in uneven, malicious waves.
"Ha! So you do remember and know me! That’s what it is, our connection, right?!" Nicky exclaimed, grasping at the admission like a saving straw.
Peterson's brown eyes dilated wildly, and a guttural, animalistic roar ripped from his throat:
"There. Is. No. Connection!"
"Don't deny the obvious, PETERSON!" Nicky screamed.
"I am sick of you, ROTH!" Aaron broke into a scream.
Nicky lunged forward sharply, aiming to close the distance instantly with the remnants of his speed, but Peterson reacted preemptively. From another scrap of paper right above Nicky’s head materialized a massive iron anvil. The multi-ton object crashed onto the concrete directly in front of Roth with a deafening metallic ring, sending up a fountain of stone shards and raising a thick, dense curtain of dust that completely blinded the boy for a moment.
Taking advantage of this, Aaron instantly formed a massive boxing glove over his hand and unleashed a terrifying, precise uppercut through the fog of dust straight into Nicky’s stomach. Andrew’s shadow partially acted as a shield again, absorbing the deformation, but Nicholas was still launched violently into the air.
"You're too stubborn for your own good!" Aaron screamed after the flying boy, his voice trembling with overwhelming emotion. "And I don't care how many times I made it clear for you to get lost, you always, always ran after me!"
Nicky squeezed his eyes shut from the sharp pain in his ribs, managed to tuck into a roll somehow, and landed heavily on buckling legs. He was breathing hard, blood dripping from his nose onto his jacket.
"I ran after you because you're my friend! You moron!" he screamed back with all his might.
"...I am NOT your friend," Aaron said quieter, but with a dead, terrifying clarity. "Not after everything I've done. Understand that through your thick skull at last!"
Nicky slowly straightened up, clenching his fists until they popped. Within him, the internal heat of the capacitor reached its first critical milestone.
"...You don't understand, do you? No... You're just pretending not to understand, Aaron..."
"...What the hell are you even talking about?!" Peterson jerked.
"...You're just trying with everything you've got to push me away from you, aren't you?" Nicky asked quietly, looking his friend straight in the eye.
Peterson’s eyes widened in wild, genuine shock. He flinched all over, as if he had just been stabbed in the back. His deepest, dirtiest secret had been ruthlessly exposed.
"...I'm right. Ha," Nicky gave a bitter chuckle, lowering his gaze to his battered knuckles as if searching for the right words. "Aaron... I... hah... You... Do you really think I'm capable of hating you after everything?"
Peterson didn't answer. He merely swallowed convulsively, his fists starting to tremble.
"...Aaron. I went through absolute hell in that basement," Nicky continued softly, his voice sounding surprisingly gentle despite the backdrop of ruin around them. "But I went into that damn basement voluntarily... Because I genuinely thought your dad was responsible for your disappearance. I... I always looked only at you, Aaron. You were always my main inspiration."
Aaron turned away sharply, unable to bear the gaze.
"...Ever since we were kids," Nicky continued, taking a slow step forward. "I always admired how cool you were. Your ability to pick locks, which surpassed mine tenfold. Your desperate attempts to look your own fears right in the face, even when everything around went to absolute shit."
"..." Aaron remained silent, his shoulders trembling slightly.
"...I... I wouldn't change a single thing, Aaron. Even if I had the chance to go back to that exact day when you and Mya first vanished. I would still break myself to pieces trying to save you. Because... you mean the world to me."
Finch pressed her palm to her lips in her hiding spot. Her eyes went round with shock.
“Is he serious? This guy just had his insides battered, and he’s... he’s confessing to this?”
"...Maybe I'd end up a cripple and a mental wreck all over again," Nicky continued bitterly, the azure gleam in his eyes dimming for an instant. "Maybe I'd have to endure years of bullying and mockery at school all over again because of Finch and her crowd. Maybe you'd try to push me away like this with your fists over and over. But... I would retrace every single damn step. Because your freedom, Aaron, means more to me than my own life... pal."
Aaron shuddered violently all over, his breathing turning ragged.
"I know I might sound completely selfish. Maybe I shouldn't be bothering you at all or forcing you to hang out again. I sound pathetic, I know, right?" Nicky sniffled. "But... I can see it. I can clearly see this suffocating guilt and endless self-flagellation in your eyes. I know you don't hate me, Aaron. You're just..."
Finch leaned her back against the crate, feeling something hot crawling down her cheeks. She touched her face with her fingers—tears? Since when did she, the recognized mean girl of the school, ever cry over "Sick Nick"? But... his words. This terrifying, absolute devotion. This pure, unadulterated faith in a friendship that neither basements, nor years of separation, nor beatings could break.
She was suddenly struck by an unbearable, sickening wave of shame. She desperately wanted to step out from behind these crates right now, fall to her knees before Nicky, and just apologize—not because she was backed into a corner by threats, but because she was genuinely, truly sorry for every single school day she spent destroying him.
Nicky and Aaron locked eyes once more. Quiet, bitter tears rolled down both boys' faces, mixing with the dirt and soot.
But Peterson regained control of himself faster. A spasm contorted his face, and he forced his familiar mask of ruthlessness back on with all his might.
"...Maybe you're right about some things, Roth. But you completely overlooked one tiny detail... I am a monster. A dangerous, broken monster. And you'll be a hundred times better off if you stay as far away from me as possible."
"...Like hell I will!" Nicky cut him off.
Gathering the last scraps of energy for an ionized sprint, Nicky swept toward Aaron like a whirlwind. In a high leap, he swung his leg, intending to deliver a powerful vertical axe kick straight to his opponent’s head.
But Aaron was ready. His activated extrasensory perception worked perfectly: a second before the strike, he read the vector of the attack by Nicky’s flaring aura. From the snatched scrap of paper in his left hand, a heavy steel shield materialized instantly, taking the brunt of Roth’s crushing kick with a dull ring. And even though Aaron’s feet were literally driven into the dirt up to his ankles from the horrific kinetic feedback, he didn't lose focus. With his right hand, he whipped out the next drawing—a sturdy hemp rope. In the blink of an eye, he lashed it around Nicky’s ankle with a whipping motion and yanked down hard, flooring Roth flat on his back onto the concrete.
"I’m going to... I’ll... beat all this damn desire to ever see me out of you!" Aaron growled, breathing heavily.
Andrew reacted instantly. Black tendrils of shadow lunged forward, trying to push Aaron away from his fallen master, but Peterson threw forward another sheet:
"To battle!" out of the whiteness of the paper burst a whole pack of caricatured, vicious wolves with inky snarls. They pounced on Andrew with growls, tying the shadow down in combat.
Aaron hovered over Nicky, his face pale and unhinged.
"...I don't care if every single blow hurts me a hundred times more than it hurts you, Nicky! Believe me! Do you hear me?! It was exactly the same way in that cursed basement!"
Nicky's eyes widened in horror. The basement?.. A bright, painful flash of that terrifying day surfaced in his mind. The heavy iron crowbar in his best friend’s hands, the whistle of the air, and the dull impact that shattered his past life.
With those words, Aaron whipped out another piece of paper. From it, a massive brown bear materialized with a roar. The beast swung a clawed paw heavily and delivered a crushing downward blow. Nicky barely managed to raise the remnants of a shadow shield before him, but the power of the summoned creature was too great.
The defense shattered into flakes. Nicky was pinned violently to the ground, his body flipping several times as he rolled across the concrete, leaving a trail of grey smoke and sparks behind him. He fell onto his stomach, wheezing and trying to brace his palms to stand, but at that moment, Aaron’s heavy boot stepped firmly onto his elbow, while Peterson’s knee drove into his back with force, locking him completely in place.
Nicky knew, he could feel that a colossal amount of bio-electricity was stored inside his body. He could try to detonate in a wave, push Aaron away, shock him, release the shadow, force Peterson to see his most horrific nightmares... But nothing would come out. The bitter, terrifying memories of betrayal that had always fueled his resolve suddenly inverted inside his mind and were ruthlessly turned against him.
Now, he wasn't a dangerous electrokinetic anymore. He was that scared, small fourteen-year-old boy again, meekly taking blows from his only friend in the pitch darkness of the basement. Nicky’s heart squeezed painfully as another, the most powerful panic attack clamped down on his battered body with a death grip. A spasm locked his lungs. He couldn't move a single muscle.
"Well?!.. Tell me now, do you still believe in our freaking connection?!" Aaron threw down from above, furious, tears in his eyes.
Peterson quickly materialized heavy ink gloves on both hands and began to methodically, brutally pummel the prone Nicky. Nicholas could only shield his head with the last of his strength using pathetic remnants of Andrew’s shadow, which was weakening by the second.
The pressure on Roth’s psyche was becoming unbearable; his thought process tangled entirely, turning to mush. The blows rained down one after another, preventing him from recovering or taking even a single proper breath. Everything was absolutely identical to years ago... He was useless again. Utterly useless.
"You were supposed to hate me!" Aaron shrieked frantically again, stepping hard with his sole onto Nicky’s open palm, grinding his fingers into the concrete. "This was supposed to be my only way to protect you! Understand that!"
Nicky’s vision was rapidly tunneling down to a tiny dot, his lungs burned from lack of oxygen, and thoughts raced through his head at the speed of light, exploding his neurons.
"And just like before, even before the basement, you kept snooping and trying to get in my way! You should have just listened to me back then!" Aaron swung a backhand from above.
The heavy fist slammed into Nicky’s cheekbone. Thick blood splurted from his mouth, splattering the grey slabs.
"I!" Aaron delivered a new blow, making everything spin completely in Nicky’s head as the world around began to rapidly darken.
"Am!" another dull blow to the jaw.
"No!" Peterson’s fist descended methodically from above.
Raising both hands high above, locking his fingers into a double fist, Peterson brought a whole barrage of crushing blows down onto the prone Nicky, leaving horrific, black-and-blue marks all over Roth’s face. He continued to frantically beat Nicholas, while his own breathing grew heavier, raspier, and bitter tears poured from his brown eyes in a never-ending stream.
“...It’s for his own good. God, this is all just for his own good! Get away from me, forget me, live a normal life!” a single thought throbbed like a manic, saving mantra in Peterson’s overheated head.
Nicky struggled to crack his swollen eyes open. The world around him suddenly slowed down, as if time had turned into a thick syrup. His foggy gaze swept over his own body—there were horrific contusions, bruises, and lacerations everywhere, which continued to multiply as Aaron continued his mad dance of rage.
"Stop it, Aaron!" suddenly a strained, frantic female shriek cut through the space of the factory yard.
Peterson didn't even turn his head. On pure reflex, he snatched another folded sheet from his pocket and threw it toward the sound:
"Bind!" from the paper materialized massive, slippery ink tentacles of a giant octopus. Within a fraction of a second, they coiled around Finch’s arms and legs, pinning the cheerleader firmly against the wall of the building. The girl didn't even have time to squeak before she found herself trapped.
Aaron seemed to have completely devolved into some wild, transcendental trance. He stopped registering what was happening, continuing to methodically drive his fists into Nicky’s already blood-soaked, almost unrecognizable face.
"Aaron! Please, stop!" Finch begged, feeling the drawn octopus tentacles begin to constrict her ribs with terrifying force, squeezing the air out. "Nicky! Please, I'm begging you, get up!"
The girl’s voice broke entirely into a raspy sob as wild physical pain and oncoming tears of horror constricted her throat.
Roth didn't answer. He could no longer hear Finch’s screams, nor could he feel Aaron’s dull blows. His consciousness seemed to have completely detached from this reality, sinking deep within his own mind, into a distant, dust-covered past...
“...I don't think I can. I won't succeed at anything,” his own timid thought from five years ago flashed through his head, from when a small, fearful Nicky’s parents were preparing to take him to gymnastics for the first time.
"Nicky!!!" from afar, through a thick layer of water, broke Finch’s scream.
“Oh, come on, Nick... You can handle anything. Remember, we’re always with you,” suddenly the old, warm, incredibly familiar voice of Aaron from his early childhood echoed clearly in his head.
"We were always together... But this whole thing was a mistake from the start!" the current Aaron screamed furiously from above. Possessing extrasensory abilities, he intercepted these resurfaced memories of Nicky’s for a fraction of a second, and it enraged him.
“Yeah... You always try harder than anyone, Nicky! And you’re definitely going to succeed!..” the clear, energetic, and cheerful voice of a little Mya echoed in his consciousness.
"Nicky! Aaron! Enough! Stop it!" Finch shrieked, suffocating in the ink binds.
“...Remember the most important thing, Nick... I believe in you!” Aaron’s childhood voice repeated in his head once more.
"Nicky! Please, I believe in you! Get up!!!" Finch screamed with all her remaining strength, and her words, in a strange, mystical way, overlaid themselves onto Roth’s memories.
"Shut u—" Aaron began to roar, raising his fist for the final, knocking-out blow.
At the exact instant Aaron’s heavy hand was supposed to embed itself into Nicky’s face, Roth arched his entire body with supernatural speed. All the bio-electric energy accumulated during the beating, retained within his tissues, struck his muscles like a short circuit. Nicky twisted on his hip and, with a wild cry, drove his rigid, momentum-infused fist directly into the right side of his opponent’s head.
The blow was monstrous. Aaron was literally swept off Nicky and thrown far to the side. Aaron’s head struck the concrete slabs hard, his face scraping against the rigid grit. The boy, flipping and bouncing several times from the colossal inertia of the hit, slid across the ground to the left, tossing his legs into the air, and finally came to a halt. Everything plunged into a ringing, dead silence, broken only by the heavy wheezing of the fighters. The sound of that impact was so horrific that Finch went dead silent instantly, terrified to even take a breath.
Groaning, swaying, Aaron began to slowly pull himself up. Crimson blood dripped in large beads from his face. The entire right side of his face was literally burning from the horrific friction against the concrete: the skin was peeling away, exposing bloody, deep lacerations that stretched from his very forehead, across his cheek, down to his chin.
Nicky, swaying and wheezing from the unbearable pain in his broken ribs, forced himself up onto his feet as well. Barely maintaining his balance, he raised his battered fists to chest level once more.
"You're right about one thing after all, Aaron..." he spat out heavily through a cough. "I... I... still believe in our connection. And I... I will always be with you... Until the very end."
Aaron drilled him with his wild gaze silently for a few seconds, breathing heavily, before noisily spitting accumulated blood onto the ground. But something in his posture changed. He no longer looked unhinged; he wasn't screaming, spitting saliva, or cursing up a storm.
This time, a quiet, unyielding, completely pure and concentrated fury erupted out of his being.
"...We'll see about that," Peterson muttered with a deathly calm.
Aaron didn't give a damn anymore that his muscles were seizing up in wild spasms from the extrasensory overload, or that his head was literally splitting apart from the raging emotions.
Nicky didn't give a damn either that every bone in his body howled in pain, electricity pierced his muscles, and his consciousness floated from the wild overheating and ionic starvation caused by the sprint.
They charged toward one another. At the point of their collision, the air exploded with a sheaf of blinding azure lightning and ink sparks. Nicky’s rigid fist locked onto Aaron’s scraped, bloody cheek, while Peterson’s open palm drove exactly into Nicky’s stomach. Clutched in that palm was yet another sheet. Straight out of it, Aaron unleashed a heavy steel staff point-blank, which struck Nicky under the ribs with terrifying force. But even as he flew back from the blow, Nicholas clamped onto his best friend’s forearm with a death grip, utilizing his own involuntary flight momentum to drag Peterson along and hurl him as far as possible.
Aaron soared into the air. Mid-flight, he materialized a massive, powerful hawk and gripped its talons firmly. The bird, flapping its wings, lunged forward like a living rocket, heading straight for Nicky. Aaron tackled Roth to the ground with his entire body, and both teenagers went rolling across the concrete slabs until Aaron was on top again. He delivered a fast right hook, but Nicky managed to block it, quickly weaving a sturdy shield from the remnants of Andrew’s shadow. Seizing the initiative, Nicky snapped his legs up and kicked his best friend square in the bridge of his nose with all his might.
Snarling in pain and fury, Aaron snatched his second-to-last sheet and materialized a bomb. The projectile detonated instantly right between them, throwing both teenagers in opposite directions with a powerful blast wave.
Managing to recover and rolling over his shoulder, Nicky lunged forward again, cutting through the smoke. With a sharp thrust, he drove his elbow directly into Aaron’s ribs, followed immediately by a snapping upward strike to the jaw. Gasping, Aaron countered instantly: a flock of enraged birds with razor-sharp beaks burst from his sheet, beginning to frantically peck at Nicky’s chest, tearing through clothes and skin. Nicky, howling in pain, activated absolutely all available bio-electric energy. Bright, azure arcs of electricity began to snap and transfer from his overheated body to Aaron’s. Peterson, shuddering from spasms, charged like a ram again, and another mutual strike threw the boys back once more.
"Nicky... Enough! Please, run away from here!" Finch shrieked frantically. The octopus restraining her, as well as the pack of wolves tearing at Andrew, dissolved into the air with a soft hiss—Aaron could no longer sustain them, giving absolutely all his mental and physical strength to the fight with Nicky.
But the boys seemed deaf. Paying her screams no attention, they staggered to their feet heavily once more. Nicholas looked horrific: skin irritated and blistered by his own current, terrible bruises, and deep bleeding cuts across his entire body exhausted him to the limit. Every use of electrokinesis now echoed in his nervous system with a hellish flash of pain. Even a regular ionized sprint brought unbearable suffering, but he endured. Now, gathering his final strength for the finish, he felt his internal reserve emptying while his wounds began to ache even worse. The accumulated bio-electricity locked in his tissues heated his body to such an extent that sweat evaporated instantly from his skin. He vitally needed to discharge this store right now, otherwise his own organs would begin to fail.
But Nicky saw—he wasn't the only one. Aaron’s arms hung like whips, his fingers trembling convulsively, unable to fully close into fists. Peterson could barely breathe.
“God, how... How are they even still standing on their feet?” Finch looked from one boy to the other in horror. “Nicky was so terribly beaten a minute ago... And now he isn't falling a step behind Aaron, as if nothing happened to him at all.”
“Because he can take it,” a cold, sober, alien voice echoed inside her own head. But Finch knew—it was her own voice. “Is that... Is that really what I think? Why have I suddenly started believing in this guy so much?”
“You’re right about one thing... I... I... still believe in our connection. I... I will always be with you...” these words of Nicky’s, spoken during the fight, echoed in the cheerleader’s mind, and it finally dawned on her.
“He can take absolutely any beating. The kind of beating that would have killed or broken anyone else long ago. And he will still, until the very end, pursue Aaron.”
Nicholas Roth wanted his only friend back so desperately, so madly, that this goal had turned into his personal religion. This was no longer just determination. This was pure, absolute madness. He was ready to burn alive, to tear his muscles to shreds, just to glue the shards of their old friendship back together.
Aaron felt his forearms go completely numb from the wild pain. He could no longer bear this load. The heavy physical objects he continuously dragged out of the sheets, Nicky’s crushing counter-strikes, the colossal mental pressure—all of it weighed on him like a lead slab right now.
But Nicky must not win. Aaron simply did not have the right to let that happen.
"GRAH-H-H!!!" Aaron shrieked frantically, tearing his vocal cords.
Peterson launched himself high upward, ignoring the hellish pain in his joints with the last of his strength, and materialized a giant eagle along with a massive blacksmith's hammer. Soaring to an immense height, he forced the bird to hover. Aaron’s eyes gleamed feverishly. He began to frantically pull absolutely every ready drawing he had left from his pockets and hurl them downward, activating them one after another.
Anvils, bricks, massive steel walls, heavy sledgehammers, sharp knives, roaring bears, huge elephants, enraged bulls—a mad, grotesque hail of hundreds of heavy items and raging animals fell from the sky like a solid wall directly toward the ground.
Nicky’s very aura at that moment... It scared Aaron shitless. This unyielding, terrifying resolve... This cursed connection! This blind attachment! These azure eyes, full of tears and pain!..
"Stop this, you damn idiot!" Aaron screamed in tears from above, throwing his voice out. "Get off my back! Do you hear me?! Don't look at me! Don't look at me with those eyes!!!"
On the ground, Nicky frantically assessed the situation. The avalanche of falling things and raging beasts was rapidly approaching. Where to evade? To the sides was useless; the radius would catch him. The only way out was to launch himself straight up, toward Aaron. But the power required to execute such a colossal jump against gravity and clear this blockade would guaranteed immobilize his body immediately after. He could release his entire accumulated bio-electric charge right now, but then he would be left completely empty, and his body was already running on pure willpower alone. Yet staying on the ground was tantamount to death. He was already maneuvering at his absolute limit, dodging the claws of attacking animals and multi-ton anvils falling from the sky with the last of his strength.
Nicky’s muscles tensed convulsively. A sick, sickly-sweet scent of ozone spread across his lower abdomen—a sure sign that the energy was beginning to break down tissues.
He knew perfectly well he would bitterly regret this. Nicky mentally locked away roughly 35% of the accumulated bio-electric energy in his body and channeled it strictly into his leg muscles. The azure sparks around his sneakers instantly shifted color, turning a deep violet, while the very air around the boy pulsed with heavy shockwaves.
"I... WILL NOT BACK DOWN!!!" Nicky screamed until his knuckles popped.
At that same moment, up at his altitude, Aaron poured absolutely all his mental concentration, all his physical power, the remnants of his life, and all his endless, suffocating rage into a single, the most terrifying drawing of his life. All other summoned items and animals on the ground instantly dissolved into black smoke. Peterson frantically grabbed a handful of compressed graphite and ink from his pocket, and his "Internal Monster" began to materialize a nightmare directly around his fist. This was no longer a regular glove—a grotesque, pulsating structure of hundreds of interwoven spikes, forged chains, and oozing ink jaws wove around his arm, into which his iron brass knuckles were immovably fused. The weapon looked like a living, pulsating chunk of primordial darkness.
Aaron laughed madly, wildly from above, looking down at the flying Nicky:
"Don't make promises you can't keep, Nicky! NIGHTMARE GAUNTLET...!!!"
Like a black comet, Peterson shot straight down toward the earth with blinding, terrifying speed. The entire area around the old factory was engulfed in pitch-black, inky darkness in a single instant.
"CRITICAL..." Nicky roared, executing his grand, insane leap upward toward his falling friend using the violet bursts in his legs. He swung his fist, drawing his arm far back.
"...ARMAGEDDON!!!" Aaron shrieked frantically.
"...DISCHARGE!!!" Nicky bellowed.
Pouring his entire being into the movement, Nicky unleashed the remaining 65% of the accumulated bio-electric energy in his body directly into his fist. This colossal, blinding azure-violet wave crashed point-blank into his opponent’s ink fist.
At the exact second of their physical collision, the "Internal Monster" inside Aaron’s Nightmare Gauntlet sharply collapsed into itself, generating a horrific micro-explosion of colossally compressed graphite. It was absolute annihilation of matter meeting Nicky’s Accumulative explosion. Due to the instantaneous, extreme ionization of the air from Roth’s discharge, a horrific "thunderclap" effect occurred—a monstrous sound wave from the instant expansion of air masses ripped outward in all directions at the speed of sound, shattering everything in its path no worse than the electricity itself.
The titanic explosion that followed ruthlessly scattered remnants of energy, thick black smoke, and blinding sparks across the entire vicinity. The earth beneath the factory shook with a terrifying rumble, the mesh on the fences snapped, and the last remaining glass panes blew out in the old buildings.
As the smoke slowly began to disperse and the kicked-up dust began to settle, Finch, who had barely managed to take cover behind a concrete parapet from the shockwave, staggered to her feet. Her ears were ringing terribly. Looking up into the grey sky, she saw two long, diverging trails of thick smoke.
One of these smoke trails belonged to Aaron. The boy had crashed down from the sky at immense speed, landing hard on the concrete and taking the primary impact on his left shoulder. He was screaming frantically through clenched teeth from unbearable pain; his shoulder muscles were torn to shreds, and minor, painful spasms from residual violet sparks coming off his clothes were still running across his entire body. His arm joints had cracked under the weight of the gauntlet even before the impact, and now the recoil had completely finished it.
The second smoke trail led to Nicky. The boy had crashed to the ground with a dull, horrific impact some twenty meters away from Aaron. A mask of pure, indescribable pain was frozen on his face. He was convulsively clutching his right arm, with which he had delivered the strike, with a death grip. His bones were not designed for such a horrific kinetic recoil—his forearm was covered in micro-fractures, and the muscles had partially torn from the colossal strain on his own body. Due to the energy vacuum, Nicky instantly became completely "empty"—he couldn't wring out even a tiny spark, and his battered body began to shudder in a wild, unceasing chill from the sharp, critical drop in internal temperature.
Both boys, overcoming hellish agony, cast one final, desperate look at each other through the settling dust... And in the next second, both simultaneously collapsed flat on their backs onto the cold concrete, completely losing consciousness from their horrific injuries and utter, absolute exhaustion.
Aaron was slowly sinking into the darkness of his "Internal Monster," risking, under the influence of the Nightmare Gauntlet's remnants, losing his human form forever and turning into silent ink dust. And Nicky lay motionless, pale as death, drawing each new breath with difficulty and a wheeze.
An ominous, dead silence reigned in the factory yard. Finch, swaying, took her first step toward the prone bodies.
