Part 29: The Flash of Forever
The Dead Land was now aptly named. The vast, scarred expanse where the sparring match between the two immortals took place was now just a bowl of ruin. As the golden energy bubbles containing the team settled, they saw the impossible devastation. Thousands of square miles—a distance that would take days to traverse—had been leveled to dust. The petrified forests were gone, the rocky ridges vaporized, the terrain nothing but a smooth, rippling plain of pulverized earth.
The bubbles gently set down on the uniform layer of fine dust that covered the ground. Jex's protective energy finally retracted, and the team fell to the ground, no longer immobilized, but no longer wanting to move either.
The silence was the most terrifying part.
"Did you... did you see any of that?" Lena asked, her voice barely a whisper, eyes wide and focused on the smoking horizon.
"No, did you?" Maya replied, her analytical mind completely overwhelmed.
Jog-Jog, rubbing his aching shoulder, grumbled, "If she did, would she have asked?"
"Hey Black, did you see anything?" Kai asked, turning to his unmoving friend.
Black slowly shook his head, his golden eyes dull. "No."
"No as in 'No, I couldn't perceive it,' or no as in 'No, I'm too cool to tell you'?" Kai pressed, the fear still making him chatter.
Black sighed, cutting him off before he could finish. "No as in, I got nothing. It was too fast, too dense. Even with my expanded telepathy, it was a blur of contradictory data."
"Did Solon catch anything?" Lena asked Kai, knowing the merged consciousness might have a different sensory input.
Kai closed his eyes, his brow furrowed, reaching inward. The team waited, anticipating some cosmic revelation.
"Solon?" Kai called softly into the merged mind....
Kai opened his eyes, a flicker of genuine terror finally crossing his face. "Nothing. And I mean nothing, as in he's not talking. Solon's not talking. Like he's dead. Absolute silence."
Black ran a hand over his face. "So, we didn't see what we just saw, and the guy who sees everything is too scared to even speak to his host?"
Jog-Jog threw his hands up in theatrical despair. "And we were floating mid-air because everything got leveled in an instant! And hey, don't forget the fact that the one guy who thought this was comedy is now too freaked out to talk! We are not dealing with a full deck of cards here!"
Maya, ever practical, put a hand to her chin. "Let's face it. Are we supposed to fight the Syndicate, or should we just ask these guys to go give them a trashing?"
Lena nodded, still disbelieving. "I heard the bored one—Jex—gave them a trashing before coming here."
"Wait, where's Arike?" Jog-Jog suddenly asked, realizing the team wasn't complete.
Arike, stepping out from behind Jog-Jog, her presence still unnervingly calm, replied, "I'm okay. And yes, for the first time in my life, I'm shocked as you."
Kai stared at Jog-Jog's terrified form and couldn't help a nervous, dark laugh. "Look at you, Jog-Jog. You're shaking so hard your muscles are getting another workout!"
Jog-Jog puffed out his chest, bristling. "I am not shaking! I'm doing a highly refined, tactical isometric vibration technique to prevent my bones from spontaneously fracturing! Which, given what we just saw, is a perfectly reasonable preventative measure!"
Maya chuckled"when did you get so smart,all those big words" I'm surprised....
*******************************************
Twenty Seconds Earlier...
"All in it is."
The distance between Jex and Dr. Orion vanished in an instant. The collision was not a crash, but a rupture of the local time stream. To the outside world, to the frightened soldiers miles away, it was nothing more than twenty seconds of blinding light. But due to the time-dilation slope caused by their light-speed movements, the battle they waged lasted an eternity, a concentrated war that ruined landscapes and redefined the meaning of combat.
The initial exchange was a torrent of fist-to-fist trauma. The air turned liquid, then solid, then fractured back into plasma with every blow. Orion, the Lumin master, fought with calculated, perfect kinetic force, targeting Jex's fundamental paradox, trying to force a logical failure. Jex countered with pure, raw chaos, delivering strikes that didn't just break bones, but violated the concept of his friend's existence.
JEX in a blur of motion, he delivered a thousand open-palm strikes, each one a different reality. Orion's body screamed in pain as one blow turned his skin to lead, another to gas, and a third made him exist in three dimensions at once.
ORION retaliated by externalizing his pure thought, creating a crystalline "sword" of solidified physics. The blade sliced Jex's midsection, separating him completely. But Jex's two halves merely laughed, reforming instantly as they delivered a combined, concussive blow that annihilated Orion's left arm.
The battle escalated from fists to energy. Orion unleashed controlled supernova bursts, miniature suns of concentrated alien energy designed to vaporize Jex at the molecular level. Jex countered by creating a black hole—a tiny, localized singularity that swallowed Orion's energy, only to spit it back out as pure, corrosive paradox.
They were forced into a desperate, constant cycle of defense and annihilation. Orion manifested energy shields so dense they folded space, only to have Jex casually unfold the space back, exposing his body to the full force of his next punch. Jex would try to imprison Orion in a pocket dimension, and Orion would use his shapeshifting mastery to become the dimension itself, escaping by rewriting the rules of the cage.
The entire landscape groaned. Mountains that had stood for millennia were reduced to sand. The sheer will they exerted sent ripples across the planet. This wasn't a fight; it was an act of cosmic, joyful vandalism.
Then, with a final, blinding flare that momentarily brought the entire Dead Land into brilliant focus, the two collided one last time, their fists meeting at the core of the devastation. The force was so immense, it momentarily created a perfect, silent vacuum.
And then, it ended.
The immense wind subsided. The light faded. Two figures stood in the desolate center of the new, dust-covered plain, perfectly still.
They regenerated their lost body parts one last time. Dr. Orion's perfect, luminous form was whole again, but his expression was that of a man who had just run a marathon across a thousand galaxies. Jex, the gentle boy, was also completely intact, a magnificent sheen of power covering his skin.
A moment of silent communion, and then Dr. Orion broke the silence with a genuine, booming laugh.
"Chicken feet!" Dr. Orion declared, referencing a dish he'd once shared with Jex in a forgotten era.
"And some alcohol to go!" Jex replied, his smile wide and infectious.
They laughed, a genuine, hearty sound that felt profoundly out of place amidst the smoking ruins.
"Let's get off this Dead Land," Dr. Orion said, gesturing dismissively at the thousands of miles of destruction they'd just created.
"And shower," Jex agreed, wrinkling his nose in mock disgust. "Oh, we haven't showered in eons!"
The two ancient friends turned and began walking, heading away from the desolate plain towards the forgotten highway that led to the city.
In the distance, the young warriors watched their heroes retreat.
"I think they forgot about us," Kai muttered, utterly stunned.
"I think they're leaving us here," Lena agreed, her voice flat with disbelief.
They shouted: "Hey!" "We're here!" "Hello!" "Don't leave us!" "I fucking hate this bubble!" "Hey!" "Old men!"
The duo paused. They looked back at the tiny, distant figures, then at each other, a look of humorous, shared realization on their faces.
Dr. Orion shrugged, a playful glint in his eye. "Eh, they'll get out eventually. Time and space are relative."
Jex simply smiled, turning back towards the horizon. "Let's go shower."