Heroism is dead [Blacklight and possibly Ouija]

“Hey, Ghost dude… What’s your name?”
Ghost dude?
"It's Kevin."
Correct him.
"No."
Ugh.

Biting his lips to stop himself from yelling at his dad Kevin clentched his fists and slowly peered out from the side of his cover in order to try get a look at the situation. Nothing much had changed from what he could see, but what he could see was very little. He bolted his back against the marble cube once again. “Listen, I could probably use your help here. Just tell Caspar up there not to break him again, ok?” Kevin rolled his eyes while out of sight. "It's not that easy...'

Ouija's attention was grabbed by a sudden bright white light filling the room, taking the form off a beam of energy. The black spirit's figure was engulfed and then dissipated; leaving nothing more than a screaming sound which commited evanescence. Ouija covered his ears and the noise, and he could even feel his father cringing at the screech. He didn't know what to do. He simply shrunk his figure down a little more so that he could hide behind his cover more effectively.

"Well... What now?"
How about you ask your new friend.
"He's not my frie- ugh."
Oh, did I win that one?

Ouija peered out from behind his cover and called over to the hero known as Blacklight, who was currrently repelling what looked like a bullet with a dark purple shielf of light. He curled a hand around his mouth to amplify his voice over the sound of the shields. "What's the plan?" Ouija hoped he had one, because he certainly didn't know what to do. The only idea he had was extremely dangerous, painful and stressful; things he was most certainly not going to put himself through because some guy in a cape wants to steal some pretty looking rock.


(I forced myself to write this without muse so I aplogise for it's... :stare:ness)

The shield would screen through the air at high speeds, slamming into the barrier drone and causing it to careen from its position, and interrupting the barrier, not that Alexander was left unprotected either way. A large dent had formed upon the robotic entity, as it slowly attempted to return to its former position, yet failed in that. Instead it would bump into the other shield before managing to hover up a few feet, back to where it was, with the shield output module luckily unharmed. Otherwise it would end up only creating a mess. Alexander mumbled something, eyes darting to the ceiling as he prepared his counter attack. Licking his lips, the male imagined the rune forming their and thanks to that neat trick that he had learned, the marking would form right above the metahuman.

Likely no one would notice is creation, due to the lack of light caused by its production and the overall darkness within the room. He of course expected the male to dodge it in some way, so there was no real danger within the attack that was to come, and it was time that he got out of here, before the police decided to send in the metahuman task forces. With a single thought, the rune released a large torrent of fire down upon the hero, hot enough to burn the ceiling around it and instantaneously start some manner of fire. The conflagration was a bright one, and hot as well, roaring loudly as it spread out, attempting to consume anything that it touched.

The shield disintegrated seconds after his attack connected; it was reasonably successful but didn’t actually destroy it. At least it showed a weakness though as part of the force field was interrupted momentarily, this meant that eventually he could beat it. Maybe? Looking back to the Cloaked kid he could tell he was up to something, mainly because the running theme of the day was that he was up to something.

“What’s the plan?” Kevin shouted over. Blacklight hadn’t expected to be the responsible one today and plans weren’t exactly his style, he’d probably just continue to make it up on the spot. Blacklight heard it before he saw it and knew he had to act fast, suddenly flames erupted from the ceiling and launched themselves towards him. With incredible speed he dived out of the way fast enough to avoid being cooked alive, but the flames still seared across his lower left leg. Thankfully his suit was inflammable so he wasn’t caught alight, but the heat had caused some serious harm to his lower leg. He rolled out of his dive and settled himself crouching on one knee, not fully sure whether he could stand yet. Blacklight looked over to see the flames had caught and were spreading, threatening to engulf the whole museum. He observed the scared kid in the corner and knew that he was his only chance to minimize the damage and possible casualties.

“Ok Kevin, if you can do anything about that fire now would be a great time to do it! I’ve got something else I want to try out over here.” Upon finishing that sentence he outstretched his arm and formed a Bow made of solid light, quiver appearing on his back at the same instant. He looked directly towards the boy in the cloak and knew that to get anywhere he was going to have to start with the robots. He reached for his quiver and then unleashed a flurry of arrows towards the boy’s shields and drones, attempting to destroy the exposed drones and hopefully take down his shields.

Fire exploded from the roof, and fortunately the Speedster was able to avoid a large amount of a torrent. Ouija swallowed nervously and remained crouched down behind his marble cube of protection. It looked like it was getting out of control, and all he could do was watch it with a slightly dropped jaw. “Ok Kevin, if you can do anything about that fire now would be a great time to do it!..." he faded out after that, the roar of the fires growing too loud. Can I do anything about the fire? Ouija bit his lip before looking to his hands; and narrowing his eyes at the pentagrams tattoo'd onto his palms. Maybe I can...

Quickly, he scampered out of his hiding place and ran to the area beneath the flames which were starting to engulf the roof. He clapped his hands together and it was at that point his father realised what he was going to do. DON'T YOU DARE. But it was too late, Ouija slammed his hands against the floor, and a green pentagram immediately cracked onto the ground around him and then a light translucent green column rose around the edge of the symbol; creating a cylinder shaped shield. Above him he kept the fire contained and it began dying out because it's oxygen supply was dwindling but unfortunately, Ouija was stuck in there too.

The heat was intense and Ouija had immediately began sweating, and the smoke made him choke on every breath. He was on his hands and knees, covering his mouth while the flames continued to wither away, suffocating. The smoke was starting to burn his eyes.

I swear, if this kills us - I'm killing you.

The hero seemed to dodge the flames that would have melted his flesh off in a matter of seconds,  but that did not completely save him from getting damaged, as this fight went more towards the one sided by the seconds, though Alex had no plans of letting the two stay in a burning building anyway. With a sigh, he turned to the drone that was standing behind him, one that was projecting the secondary shield over him, in case the first one would be unable to protect him, and of course he had multiple secondary protection measures in place. However it seemed that even with his injuries the hero wanted to persist, trying to form some sort of plan with their ally and then making an assault upon the drone with a large amount of light arrows, ones that he could not let hit the drone, as it would break eventually, and leave him with less protection than before.

A single rune would form upon the automota, and within an instant an invisible force would knock the arrows to stray, slamming into the force field that surrounded the small open point there the drone was. It were as if somehow an invisible force were pushing the attacks aside, protecting the drone from any damage that would have destroyed it, though even the repelling force had its limit and a few of the arrows would make their mark, slamming into it, and creating rather nasty looking dings. Sparks would issue from it, and the machine teetered before falling into the shield and then rolling to the ground where it lay. Alexander sighed lowly to himself, the damaging of his weapon perhaps slowly starting to mount along with the heroic figures jumping in.

What he east expected however was the male raising a shield to contain the fire, and by default himself, which would have led to him being devoured by fire, or suffocating from the smoke. While the logical thing was to let him die and let his death distract the other long enough for Alexander to escape, yet he could not let someone die like that. It was perhaps his conscience that prevented such heartless action, and so he would act. With a though he would move the rune that marked him as the target of teleportation and placed it upon Ouija within an instant,, and then move the location to  next to where the other hero as standing, though not to where anything strange would happen. Within an instant Ouija would find himself out of the firer and somewhere safer, Alexander sighing to himself pleased with the result as he forced his other drone to form back into a sphere before rolling to Alexander who picked it up, slipping through a temporary hole within his barrier that formed. With a thought the rune on Ouija was gone and back on Alexander.

The arrows had worked, the boy had clearly tried to deflect them as most had bounced harmlessly off of the drone, but in the end enough made their mark to finish it off. This felt like the first real success that there had been all day! Blacklight looked for his next mark and drew his bow, but first paused to see if Kevin had managed to extinguish the flames. Over his shoulder he saw Kevin trapped on his hands and knees in a large pillar like field that was filling with smoke. Ignoring the cloaked boy Blacklight span on the spot and unleashed a volley of arrows towards the field, he knew he had to get the kid out of there at any cost!

“Kevin, just hang in there!” He yelled across the room. He was starting to panic, not knowing if he could do anything to save the kid from what was certain death if left uninterrupted. The worst thing was that it was entirely his fault; he had gotten too caught up in the action and hadn’t paid enough attention to what was going on! Just as he drew to fire another series of arrows at the barrier he was stopped in his tracks as Kevin disappeared from inside the barrier and reappeared next to him. The bow dissipated instantly as all of his focus had now been relocated to the boy. This was exactly the same as what he witnessed moments ago so he knew who was behind it. “Kevin, I am so sorry I got you into that mess” Blacklight said as he reached over the boy to check his pulse and that he was breathing ok.

Blacklight started to think that maybe he had gotten this situation all completely messed up, just moments ago this kid had had his legs broken by some of Kevin’s ghosts and now here he was going out of his way to save his life! Being a hero had been so important that he’d heard alarm bells and just ran in to shut the bad guy down, but maybe this wasn’t one of those scenarios, maybe the kid was just misunderstood. It was time to try things another way.

He checked the kid could cope on his own for at least a little bit and stood up and walked parallel with the cloaked boy facing him dead-on.
“Listen kid, I know you aren’t a bad guy. What you just did was actually pretty heroic considering how everything has played out this far!” A quick glance back and then he stepped a little bit closer to the shielded boy. “Whatever you’ve got there this is definitely not the way you want to go about things, at best it’ll get you in bad situations but it’s more likely to set you down a path that you don’t want to be heading down.” Something distracted him and Blacklight had to stop for a second, in the distance he could hear the howling of some very familiar sirens, which could only mean that the LAPD had called in their back-up super-squad. He snapped himself back to the situation at hand and knew that this could be his chance to do something really good, maybe even helping this kid in the long run.
“Look, the LAPD have called in their super-squad and they’re going to be here any minute now. You haven’t done anything too bad yet, you still have a chance of getting out of here… and I can help! But first I need you to talk to me so we can try and work things out.”

Ouija's vision was beginning to cloud with the sickening cinders filling his eyes. His coughing was growing quieter but their strength was increasing, to the point where they felt like they were shredding his throat. The roaring flames above him were starting to drown out the displeased tones off his father in his head. But he could still hear snippets.

This your fau-...-irrepsonib-...-I hate you

There was a moment where it all seemed to slow down. Through the veil of vicious fumes he could see sparks of fire which looked suspended in the air. And for a moment, he thought that it was over - that he would finally become one of the spirits which he had been living with since his 10th birthday, but from nowhere that oddly peaceful sensation was dragged away from him. The floor beneath him had changed, and was much cooler. He opened his watering eyes before falling onto his side from a mixture of fear and exhaustion.

It took him a few seconds to realise but the air around him was now breathable; so he took a large, 5 second inhale of fresh air which was riddled with smoke and flames and his lungs sung a chorus of joy when they were inflated. The exhalation felt just as good, finally allowing his heart rate to slow down. He had an overwhelming urge to rest, an urge his father did not share.

You nearly got me killed!
Kevin coughed.
Never do that again!

There was no response from Kevin who was trying to cool himself down on the dirty floor - trying to ignore the shards of glass that had embedded into his flesh when he was teleported onto the sharp ground. It did hurt though and his eyes continued to water. Peeling an eyelid open, through the messy screen of smeared tears he could see that the fire had finally burnt out; with minimal damage to the building. The two had stopped fighting, and Kevin could tell that the hero was trying to find a peaceful way to settle the situation.

I'm sorry for nearly getting you killed again Dad. Kevin thought, black blood trickling down the side of his arm.
You should be.
Jeez, no need to be an arse....
I am not an equinal creature!
What?
Shut up, boy!

Kevin laughed before rolling over slightly - his lungs were still burning. He nearly tried to sit up but a sharp pain in his leg, caused by a massive shard of glass which had been pointing upwards when he was transported and stabbed him in the leg when he landed. He musn't have felt it due to adrenaline, but now it was beginning to hurt. He groaned, before yelping briefly - moving a hand to try and feel how bad the damage was.

Man up.
You're a corpse.
No I'm not, technically I'm a ghost.
Go away.

Kevin laughed again, before his laughter was killed by another gasp of pain - the wound in his leg was starting to form a smear of dark black blood along the floor. If he was lucky this situation would be resolved before he lost conciousness, then it would be harder for him to explain things - such as the fact his blood was as black as night and if he was unlucky he'd die. Tears were starting to take a tangible form, rolling down his face - slowly at first, but gradually gaining speed; smearing his eyeliner somewhat.



[soz for taking so long with such a disapointing post]

Whether or not his heroic act was appreciated did not matter to Alex, as he simply did what he thought was right. While he was willing to keep quite and simply ignore the hero that was trying to talk to him, he would humor him with an answer. Alexanders life had already gone too far the moment that he had met Matthew, the one that had pulled him into the realm of the occult. The sound of the sirens could be heard, which meant that he would be dealing with the Los Angeles special forces, something that meant this little interaction would have to be over soon. A low sigh escaped from Alex's lips as he looked to the male that he had saved, who was now bleeding profusely.  

”You want to help me? I've already caused perhaps thousands of dollars of property damage and I have this..” Alex asked simply pulling the tablet from his satchel and showing it. His attention would snap to the male, the one that had seemed to come to help the hero. 'You can't help me and I would suggest you two get out of here.” He said to Ouija with as few words as possible, the barrier around him lowering, and the drones that produced it returning to him, Alexander depositing them and planning to make his exit. The tendrils of shadow would retreat back into his cloak as he turned his attention from the two and would prepare to make his exit.

The boy seemed uninterested in Blacklight's offer of help, whether it was some sort of pride, or him just believing that he was genuinely beyond it at this point. Still he knew he had to try and get through to the kid, he wasn’t bad yet but he was on a very dark path that could only get worse as time went on. The boy had withdrawn all his many enchantments and tentacles so it was clear the battle had finished, even though it never should have started.
“Kid, all you’ve done is property damage, that’s nothing! Plus i'm pretty sure a fair bit of that was my fault... But you’ve got to stop things like this before somebody get’s really hurt. I’m not saying I’m an ideal choice for anybody but I can handle what’s going on outside and help you get away, but I’m going to need you to work with me here!”
The sirens had stopped moving and were all clearly lining up outside waiting to get word, he knew the type people they had coming in wouldn’t discriminate so it was very dangerous for anybody to be in there at all. He was up against the clock now.

“You have so much power and it is not too late for you to make a difference.” Blacklight stood looking directly at the kid as his suit began to power-down, the light slowly dimming as his eyes also returned to their normal colour. He was hoping to make himself appear more human and approachable, somebody that could gain the boy’s trust. He heard another groan from Kevin behind him and knew he had to wrap everything up even faster so the boy wouldn’t bleed out. He began to move closer to the door whilst trying to search for a way to get through to the kid. He would tell the police to move on whatever, the kid hadn’t killed anyone and thinking back he had barely even tried to harm them.

“I’m going to go handle outside right now so you have about two minutes to disappear. You’ve just gotta ask yourself how you want people to see you. Cos’ right now the choice is still in your hands, Hero or Villain.”
The line was cheesy as hell but it couldn’t help but ring true, heroes and villains were everywhere in this world and most people had to make the call at some point. Blacklight turned and started a gentle jog to the entrance where he could hear that the forces were now lining up.
“When you make your mind up come find me,” he shouted back over his shoulder with a smile as he was nearing the door. He knew that the kid would be gone by time he got back to Kevin, but he had given him an option and that was all he could do for now. He would be back in a moment to take Kevin somewhere that he could get patched up before there was any lasting damage.

His glow started up again as he stepped out the front doors and was met by about ten rifles pointed directly at him. People were crowded all around the streets to observe the huge gathering of police and Special Forces that were surrounding the entrance to the museum. The streets fell silent with only the occasional murmur as everybody was waiting for Blacklight to say or do something.
“H-hey officers, funny story actually…”

"Oh let's go help those two people out" For god sake Kevin.
"S-shut up..."

Kevin's vision was starting to blur and he could feel strength leaving his body.

You had one job, Kevin - pilot the body, and you messed that up.
"I said... shut up."
And now the person who you came here to help as fucked off and left us to die.
Kevin sighs.
Well. Done.
"I'm sorry."
Sorry's not good enough.
"Well, what would be?"
...
"I thought so."
Dick.
"Ugh."
If this kills us, I'll never forgive you.
"You'll be... dea..."


Kevin's eyes rolled into the back of his head, before he fell unconcious.

Oh great, now you're unconcious.

Alexander wanted to scoff, but he would not so brazenly spit in the face of the heroes bravado, it was interesting in a way. Even though someone was bleeding out due to his actions, which tended to kill people if they bled out enough. His attention snapped to the goth youth, narrowing as if determining his worth, and then he shook his head, blinking as his cognitive graphify went into effect, creating the glowing runic marking upon the male that glowed a light blue. It would quickly begin to reverse the damage that was done to him, enough so that no one could accuse him of not trying if the guy did die. The hero however did leave him with one question however, hero or villain. Alexander shook his head, such black and white morality annoying to him, as if because you stole you were evil and if you saved people your intentions were good. Shades of grey existed, and he liked to consider himself part of those shades. He envisioned his room, a rune appearing there, and within an instant he was gone, with the item in tow.

The officers were fairly insistent on entering the building anyway and Blacklight had pretty much expected this to be the case. However, before they could enter the building he had charged off into the back of an ambulance that was waiting on standby and acquired a medical kit, which was the main reason he had even left the building as without it there was little he could do for Kevin. Sprinting back into the building ahead of the police he knelt down by the kids side. He reached for the kit and realised he might not actually be in need of it anymore. Looking around the room he saw the kid was gone, as was whatever he came here for! He had to admit he was a little disappointed, but at least he had helped Kevin before he left. Blacklight didn't want to leave the boy here for the police to find, he we lying in the middle of a lot of destruction and he was surrounded with a pool of unusually coloured blood. The kid had helped him so there was no way Blacklight could leave him now, not when police would probably take him in custody and ask him questions and put him through all kinds of tests. Rick put an arm underneath the boys upper body and another beneath his legs and stood to his feet. The kid wasn't too heavy so this would be easy, he ran to the back of the building and made a swift exit.

Arriving back at the hotel room and managing to avoid drawing any attention, Rick placed the boy on the bed and checked to see he was breathing ok and wouldn't require further medical attention. He had decided that maybe it was time to move on from LA and find somewhere else to go. Kevin had been a great partner today though so he wouldn't leave without at least a note. He scrawled on a piece of paper and laid it on the table in the room for the boy to find when he woke.

Hey Kevin,
You did good today kid, who knows how things would have turned out if you hadn't shown up when you did!
The room's free for the rest of the week, take as long as you need to rest up and get yourself sorted. You earned it!

Ever find yourself in need of some help just give me a call or something,

See ya soon,
Blacklight

With the note left behind Rick attached his number and quickly changed into civilian clothes before walking out of the door.
'Hmm I wonder if that blonde chick is still upstairs...'

The end.