Garrett had chosen to walk home after seeing Maya off. There was a moment of clarity, the term for which he understood perfectly now. He had been obsessed with her, putting her on a pedestal that was impossible to reach and then raging at her distance. It was funny, in a sad way.

Rain had come down on the way back to the Sanctuary like a deluge. The roar of the heavy rain was deafening. It was helping Garrett drown out the voice that was sinking its claws into him, capitalizing on this moment of weakness. Any light that may have blossomed under Kealey's spell was a distant memory now, the darkness of his mind roiling and churning like rogue waves in the North Atlantic. Towering monsters of regret and self hatred which crashed on him repeatedly.

The golden doors were pushed open and he entered the foyer. Lisa stopped her typing and said something to him. It only registered as a murmur. His mind seemed as if it was a flat plane, like the way the world was seen long ago. Ships could just fall off the edges of the map. He chuckled at the thought, though his eyes were dazed and glassy, his face pale and strained.

He couldn't register if there were others around him, as he was experiencing tunnel vision. The tunnel led into the gymnasium. The battleground for the duel. He had chosen the place and the time, the demon had chosen the weapons. One way or another, he would drive the madness out. No longer would it isolate him from friends and family and drive people away with its wicked toothy grin and angry claws , dripping with venom. One of them was going to die tonight.

The gym was dark, with only the light from the hallway and the locker rooms piercing the inky blackness. He pulled his shirt free and let the wet rag fall to the floor. His shoes and socks joined the heap. His feet locked together at the ankles and his body plummeted to the floor. He caught himself solid just above the floor and started doing push ups. In his case, they were push backs.

The world of humanity. He pushed it away. The world of mutants. He pushed it away. The Mansion and its good souls. He pushed them away. The Sanctuary and the dark souls. He pushed them away. Everything that pushed down on his mind and made it strain as if it would crack and explode was pushed away. There would be only one thing left to do.

He rose from the floor, his muscles primed and sweat flowing so freely that rain and the salty stuff could no longer be told apart. A heavy punching bag swayed in the half shadow before him. He could see its red, Haywire frenzied eyes.He could see its hands, gloved in tight leather and making taunting moves at him. Calm and measured steps moved him to within arm's reach of the creature, alive and glorious in its hatred for him.

" Now or never, little boy. Let me crush you so you can stop taking up space and I can rule as I was fated to do.[/i]" The tremor began in his feet, as the kinetic energy rose like a great serpentine dragon, rising from the depths of his soul unchained and unfettered. The faster it climbed, the more his body shook. Garrett's eyes clouded over as the rage which had been suppressed met the Haywire and the dragon within with full force. "Never!"

The arm cocked back like the hammer of a trigger. The force inside his body pushed along the line of his arm so fast that it was charging ahead of his fist. When the two met, Garrett swore the very energy itself struck the leathery substance covering the bag. When his hand followed, the skin over his knuckles split open like ripe watermelons, blood spraying the bag.

He pulled his hand back and looked at it, the red of the blood inciting him into a frenzy. The bag swung, its face grinning wickedly." Really? Is that all you have? No wonder you fail at everything. You are a husk and I shall-[/i] "SHUUUTTT UPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" The fist of retribution sailed into the bag so hard that the anchors above it groaned under the virus induced pressure. Garrett smiled as his arm shook. There had been a satisfying crack as his fingers splintered multiple times. His wrist was surely shattered as well. The pain roared through him like an unchecked inferno. The breath in his lungs ragged, his eyes wide and white. He pulled the mangled member from the hole in the sack.

Abyss Just finished showering, he had been in the pool for some time doing laps. It was fun to try to not knock all of the water out of the pool and yet stay aloft enough that he didn’t simply sink to the bottom and walk the floor. It was trick paticulary with his body mass. Typically he would have just toweled off and went to his room, but Venus had insisted that Abyss was damaging their hair…and yes his hair was their hair after entering the void so he had decided to take better care of himself. Better care of his liver for Jupiter, beter care of his lungs for Saturn, better care all around. Ugh. So after showering off for the second time He began to make his way back toward the Gym when he heard voices…a voice..creepy. It reminded him of the different inflection his brothers and he carried. None the less it freaked him out.

~ - ~" Now or never, little boy. Let me crush you so you can stop taking up space and I can rule as I was fated to do." ~^~"Never!"

It was a feat to make the hairs on the back of his neck raise in caution, very, very little caused him for true Concern of being in danger an hadn’t sense he was about twelve. However the Twisted edge to the voice and the slippery sound that punctuated every hit of the punching bag did little to make him fall in love with the situation. Mutants if anything were unpredictable. Super strength couldn’t stop some psychic from putting you comatose at a thought nor could it stop some pyromancer from setting you on fire for kicks. But if they didn’t go for broke well that was a different story all together.


~*~Really? Is that all you have? No wonder you fail at everything. You are a husk and I shall-

~ + ~"SHUUUTTT UPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

“Lets take a deep breath there Fellas.” He knew how much his brothers hated to be ignored so if he was having some sort of splitting of personality He reached over with his right hand and flipped the switch that he had turned off on the way into the showers. There was no reason to give himself the disadvantage of dimmed vision. He raised his hand and snapped a couple of times. ouch“ Lets talk this out. And get that arm looked at while we are at it.”

He stood there still slightly damp in a pair of black and white Hawaiian swim trunks and black flip flops looking at what quite possibly was about to become a game of hurt him, but how much?” He obviously was unstable enough to cause his own pain and destroy his own body, so he wouldn’t be going absolutely cuddly on the guy. He held his palms up an slowly made way toward Seizure. It looked like simple restraint would be the best move if talk didn’t work, it he didn’t have the luxury of throwing things in his home, unless he wanted to cause collateral damage while he was trying to stop a bit of self mutilation.

The light snapped on. It was very bright. What pupils remained under the glossy haze of the Haywire psychosis shrank in retreat of the light. It burned but Seizure opened his eyes wider. What was this thing before him? It was massive and it was red. " Let's take a deep breath there, Fellas." The bald head swiveled around to the demon. It was gone! The punching bag swung there weakly, blood painted in a spray pattern around a hole in its side. It was a trick!

He tilted his head at the monster. His mouth was moving and the words didn't match what he heard. It was like an old and badly subtitled martial arts film. A hearty and pained cackle came from his mouth as he bent backward on his heels slightly. His head snapped back and his colorless eyes stared into the massive incarnation." You call me a coward?" He pointed at himself with his gnarled and blood soaked hand, each finger pointing in a different direction as if they were straws coming from the scarecrow's cuffs.

" You have wasted yourself on that toy, you pathetic worm. Now you face my true self!" Seizure nodded slowly. The beast was massive! It could tear him to shreds in an instant! NO!! He would die before he yielded before this sick thing in his mind. Its hands raised at him, palms outward. It was an attack! It was approaching, the ground shaking beneath its feet." You've ruined my life! I will take it myself before you ever rule me again!!"

Blood pumped out of him as his heart rate increased, smacking the hardwood floor of the gym in sick splats of ruddy molasses. Like the sound of a thousand rattlesnakes, his nerves sat on end, primed to explode into a great tsunami of pain. He would stand on the edge of oblivion and destroy himself in a furnace of rage, taking this carnal beast with him! " Do your worst, demon. I will die a thousand times before you ever lay a hand on me again. Come! Come and taste the fruits of your labor!"

Sigh. He was ready for bed, why couldn’t this happy in the after noon. It had been a long, long, long day and it was only getting longer. With no end in sight. He stared at the man in question and placed the name with the face, they had yet to meet, Seizure…pain manipulation. Well that settled all thoughts about being vaporized or set to fire….he might get away with being overloaded with pain directly. He hesitated for a moment and then made up his mind to get this done with. Maybe of he got hurt enough he could take a vacation.

~ + ~" You call me a coward?"

Abyss’s eyes widened and he didn’t even bother answering out loud.No. I didn’t.

~ - ~" You have wasted yourself on that toy, you pathetic worm. Now you face my true self!"

huh. A healthy serving of delusions, and Speaking for someone ele in the room. He was thankful the room was empty, he might be cleaning up jogger bits other wise, and a whole lot less sympathetic to the currently psychotic man’s case. It was bound to happen around here, it came with the territory, you lived with too many blood thirsty people, some were bound to crack. And go all crazy koo koo sauce on you.

~ + ~“You've ruined my life! I will take it myself before you ever rule me again!!"

Damn

At this point he began to move a bit faster there was blood and lots of it and now he was talking about killing himself. His stride changed from calm and non aggressive to knock him out stat. He hated it when he had to be gentle and try to not get hurt at the same time. Gentle violence, what a joke.

~ + ~" Do your worst, demon. I will die a thousand times before you ever lay a hand on me again. Come! Come and taste the fruits of your labor!"

He wasn’t going to talk to the man as he closed on him, he was going to do something quite simple and pretty effective, a bear hug he was then going to cover the man’s nose and mouth and try to pacify him to unconsciousness. He raised his arms and went to envelope him. Circling the man as if he would embrace him as a brother.

The beast bore down on its haunches and charged him. Seizure did not flinch or move. Its great wide arms seemed to blot out the light, its shadow engulfing him as the massive arms followed suit. The moment of contact came and Seizure saw the most peculiar thing prior to the explosion. Time had slowed to seconds lasting for hours. Perhaps this was what death was. The beast's neural map was everywhere as the smaller man disappeared into his flesh. It seemed to fluctuate and overlap on itself. It was a beautiful sight, a moment of peace and serenity as it seemed to him as if the constellations surrounded him and caressed him, carrying him off into the universe.

Not yet, though. This brief flicker of a second was just as serene as the fabricated village of Trinity, its mannequins at the table and child mannequins playing in the yard the moment before the first atomic test ignited. There was no sound. Only a small ivory pearl of light. It floated for a moment inside of him, seeming to glide over the gossamer strands of light that was his spirit body. The pearl descended until it landed. What happened next, only the storytellers could guess at.

The demon stood defiantly before him. His crude voice was silenced in an instant. The dragon that had risen from the core of Garrett's heart erupted in such a stellar display that the hood the madman wore was disintegrated in an instant. The face beneath, a twisted visage of eternal pain. Garrett's inner child, thrown to the wolves. Had he more time to understand, he might feel pity for the small thing, the impetuous wrath of an abandoned boy. The dragon devoured him at first, but as the dragon snaked its coils back into the deep bowels of his subconscious, Garrett swore he saw them embracing.

In the physical world, oxygen was at a premium. What was left of the painmancer's consciousness literally exploded. Whatever intensities had occurred at the Mansion, this supernova dwarfed it as a mountain to a grain of sand. It happened in such a short burst that Garrett returned to the womb. He seized and jerked in the monster's (Abyss'?) arms. He shook so violently that he bit deep crevices into his tongue, blood bursting from his mouth as he gasped for air.

Have you ever hugged a live Transformer? Perhaps covered your self in honey and offered your self up to a den of hungry grizzlies? Played in New York City traffic? Jumped off of the empire state building a few times? Dove into a running wood Chipper.

Well Abyss was currently wishing he could do any of those things, all of those things anything but trying to save the life of the man before him, His muscles tensed and spasmed somewhere in his mind a faint whisper begged him not to squeezed to hard, he ignored it. if he thought he had the strength to stop this he would have done it. but the presence of mind wasn’t there. His mind raced through even lash of the whip of his childhood every prod of a needle every stab of a tazor, ever playful but to hard jab of his brothers. He had nothing to compare what this was. He was dying over and over and over again.

He Screamed unabashedly Into the colorless sky He couldn’t see he couldn’t here there was nothing but absolute suffering. And then it stopped. His body still screamed with the memory and ache. He breathed and yet this wraith was not the repeated torture that was. His arms went slack. And his throat was raw.

He was dazed at best. “are we alive?” he spat on the ground as he slumped over to his side.

With the release of the red giant's arms, gravity pulled Garrett down hard. His head bounced on the floor of the gymnasium. He looked like an extra from a horror movie. A gory one, at that. The jostle brought a glimmer of consciosuness back to him as he inhaled sharply, his lips returning from blue to thirsty red. The sharp inhalation nearly drowned him, as his mouth was full and dripping with his blood. He turned his head to the side and spit a large gout of the stuff out.

Hearing Abyss' question, he smiled weakly. Yes, they were alive. As battered and bloodied as Garrett was, he had never felt so alive. He remembered sitting out on the lake with his parents. A warm summer day and his voracious reading of poetry. His favorite poem came to mind and he used every last living ounce he had to recite it, though it was so ragged and weak that only Abyss would hear it. He could feel the warm Delaware sun and hear the call of Canadian geese as they flew overhead. His parents were waiting to hear Garrett read his favorite of all poems.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.


A raucous and harsh cough erupted from him as he felt the shimmering shake of nether close in around him. He held on, just a moment longer, to finish.


The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


(OOC: The poem is Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. Garrett is not dead.)