The impact was an open palm into a wall of hardened gelatin, a wall that pushed back right before anything actually struck. The palm of Brick’s glove met the invisible telekinetic barrier shielding the blue giant, all his newly found telekinetic force screaming against the psychokinetic friction for an instant before something hit home.
DarkLord blinked back at him as the blow landed, Brick’s pulsing palm doing all of shifting his neck maybe a quarter-inch. The bulk of the force did as it seemed to always do, bleeding off the hybrid and into the world around them.
Barely anything seemed to happen at all.
But that barely…
Brick fell back, gasping as the wet pressure behind his eyes seemed to snap; giving way like a rubber band held tight for too long. Air he didn’t realize he barely had access to rushed back into his lungs, the air tasting like burning asphalt and copper but suddenly so so sweet at the same time.Wha- Instinct and a suddenly-working brain had him move again, Brick dropping to slip past an invisible swipe as he tore backward across melting asphalt; body sliding immediately back into a fighting stance. I… Annoyance was a pulse of its own, only one through his body instead of outward as telekinetic force. I hit him. His teeth grit as he dove back again, a white beam of disintegrating force tearing through the space where Brick was. I hit him.
And it did all of nothing.
The guy’s shield had literally taken it on the chin and it’d barely done anything at all.
But as Brick raised his hands again, he finally tracked the barely.
High above them, the bruised crimson sky shuddered. Portal edges flickered, their red edges losing cohesion for all of a heartbeat with a burst of static. Silver saucers clipping those edges suffered for it, the crafts sparking wildly; one spinning out of control completely and crashing to the ground in a distant muffled explosion.
He's budgeting. Brick blinked back at the alien in front of him, the thought slipping into and out of his mind without an answer from the blue freak. Fighting and managing the invasion… it took something out of him.But what?
DarkLord didn't seem to catch the slip.
Not immediately at least, not as the exposed mass of brain-meat atop his head pulsed white again as those of his eyes stayed locked on the sky. Brick’s gaze dropped from the sky, from DarkLord even, and down to his own two hands. Was it the… No, that almost seemed too easy. But, what if…
Even as Brick worked the math, somebody else screamed his way into the opening. The air ruptured again, a jagged blur of toxic green displacing all the oxygen around him as he tore down with all he had.
Force.
“Yo, freak!” The rasp of sandpaper tore from his throat as a barely-formed construct of glowing green flickered to life over Butch’s right fist. Avoiding center mass entirely, that oversized gauntlet dropped directly onto the side of the bastard’s face.
DarkLord’s head snapped sideways again, thick neck muscles straining from the blow. It was more than Brick’s own hit had done — much more.
Blood? Brick’s eyes went wide at the sight of a thick spray of dark, almost-black, blood flying loose from the alien’s split lip, the liquid splattering across melted asphalt. How?
Butch didn’t stop.
He never stopped if he had the chance.
The momentum of the punch carried him forward, body a tight coil of glowing green rage that forced a fridge-sized green foot to life; the heel driven straight down into the center of DarkLord’s chestplate.
The blue flesh-armor buckled inward enough to send the villain sliding, even as nothing broke.
A split-second later, the world skipped another frame. "Squishy head!"
Boomer was a strobe light of screaming cobalt hitting everywhere at the exact same time the moment he flashed back to the fight. A hundred punches a second rained down on the psychic’s shoulders, neck, and the invisible barrier just millimeters above that still-pulsing brain. Tiny strikes of blue lightning sparked and fizzled with every impact doing whatever Boomer could force them to do and keeping the bad guy distracted. "Squishy head! Gross gross gross! Duck, Brick!"
Brick was already in-motion the instant he saw the alien’s hand twitch, a sweeping telekinetic backhand roaring through the space where he had just been in a shearing wave of force. Brick cleared it but the steel billboard behind him hadn’t been so lucky, the top ten feet of it disintegrating to nothing as the telekinetic strike tore through space.
Brick rushed in with another strike, palm pulsing red with gatling speed as he struck at DarkLord with as much speed as Boomer was laying on. Each blow barely had any strength to it, not at first — but none of that was the point.
No, Brick just had to test something.
Why isn’t it working?! Unfortunately, his hypothesis seemed to be getting him nowhere. No matter how many telekinesis-backed strikes he laid into the villain, the effect from before didn’t seem to be applying again.
The question was simple.
Why isn’t his TK weakening?
With a grunt, Brick dropped that strategy to go for a simpler one. Ducking another blow from the blue alien, both red boots springboarded off the giant's armored thigh. The ground cratered as all his force redirected downwards instead of into the air, the psychic stumbling atop empty air for a moment.
Brick was already launching himself straight up, both hands together as he spiked enmeshed fists of red-hot plasma right up into DarkLord’s jawbone.
The roar from DarkLord was an overlapping nightmare.
An agonizing nightmare.
One that Brick almost regretted causing as he blinked in the air.
Half of it vocal; a deep baritone ripped free from pain and amplified by telekinetic force. Half of it mental; a blast of psionic static that drove straight into Brick’s mind where it didn’t belong and made him remember his breakfast inside out.
"Enough!" DarkLord’s common layered over itself in their skulls as the giant threw out massive blue arms to his sides. The air pressure inverted and the world erupted.
It was almost invisible.
The force, at least.
Not the attack itself, that was tinged with white at the edges as an omnidirectional shockwave expanded outward in a perfect sphere of displaced oxygen and psychic gravity.
It caught Butch mid-swing, another construct shattered to green glass as he was swatted out of the sky. Boomer couldn’t outrun the expansion, not caught feet-first mid-spin. The blue boy skipped across jagged asphalt like both his brothers, a sapphire thrown across a lake of black in a sparking trail until he powdered a wall into nothing but particles.
Brick took the hit dead center to his chest, his ribs groaning all the way from the front and through his spine the instant before the wall of force blew him backward. Lungs lost air as the world smeared into red and gray in an end-over-end twirl.
Gritting his teeth, the Red Rowdyruff dug his boots into empty air, dual columns of fiery exhaust ripping out behind him. By the time he forced himself to a halt, Brick hovered a couple hundred feet above the clearing; DarkLord still in front of him.
Both he and the blue alien breathed heavy in the toxic air, but only one of them had their brain visibly throbbing. “We are the apex.” He forced the words out as much as he spoke them, physical voice a rasp as telepathy bled free enough to flood the area with uncontrolled mental power. “You are simple biology and we are more. I claim th-”Brick wiped a red gloved hand under his nose, the fabric coming away clean with the raw mental weight of before no longer pressing down into the meat of his brain. Red eyes flickered to DarkLord as his thoughts tracked the fight, the feedback, the — Feel the grain — the tactile feedback he copied from Damien…
“Boomer.” He didn’t need to speak loud at all. “Get Big D.”“Wha-Wait, wait, wait, what?” A pile of rubble shifted as Boomer peeled himself out of a crater, traces of blue sparks sputtering back to life around his shoulders as his little brother stared back at him with wide eyes. “But why?”“Go.” Brick’s tone snapped out, all authority in each syllable. “Now.”Boomer didn’t ask again, a streak of blue vanishing toward the city in between blinks.“Big D?” DarkLord’s pupil-less eyes tracked the departure before tracing back to Brick, a dry high click in the alien’s breath. "What is that? Some weapon?"
“What’s wrong?" Brick grinned back at the towering psychic, nose still clear of any blood as the headache settled down to just an ache now. "Can't read my mind for it?"
Those same white eyes narrowed as the alien launched himself upward with psionic force.
Brick didn’t retreat, a red comet colliding with the blue giant the same instant his other brother blasted himself free.
Butch launched himself out of the rubble of a building, trailing dust and pure rage as he threw himself into the scrum. Both brothers tackled the giant with raw muscle. No energy constructs or blasts this time, Brick just drove his shoulder right into the alien’s midsection, Butch’s arms wrapped as far as they could get around DarkLord’s waist as they both made contact.
It was barely a fight; just pure ugly wrestling with superhuman muscle against a mind trying to crush them to paste. The air grew heavier and heavier with each heartbeat, Brick felt his bones flexing under pressure as the world seemed to weigh on them harder even as nothing else broke apart.
Butch didn’t seem to care, snarling as he headbutted DarkLord’s chestplate; stubbornly refusing to let go even as alien hammer-hands dropped down on his back. DarkLord’s hand caught Butch by the shoulder, slamming him into the ground with an eruption of concrete; cracked asphalt flying sky-high.
Psychic pressure flared, a dull drill trying to bore into Brick’s temple, but he swallowed the pain as he threw blows of his own into the field around the alien’s head; anything to slow the giant down.
"BRICK!" Butch’s scream came with him spitting a glob of red into DarkLord’s face, the alien growling as he pushed down harder on his green brother.“What?”
“Just rip his head OFF!”
Red eyes narrowed to slits as Brick fought the urge to freeze in his actions, his legs already wrapped around the alien’s shoulders as he hammered down onto his skull. “REALLY?”“YES!”The air popped before Brick could yell back again, Boomer materializing in a flash of ozone with the six-foot-something frame of Damien Farell held over his head. The young man looked completely disoriented, caramel skin paling as he took in the massive blue warlord trying to crush Butch Mojo to death.
"Okay, got him!" Boomer blurted, pitch spiking an octave. “What do I do with him?!"
“Throw…” Brick grunted, face turning as red as his hair under the weight of the field pressing down on him from the inside out. "Throw him!"
Damien blinked. "Man, what?!"
“Hit him with everything you got, D!” One arm wrapped itself tight around the alien’s neck, the other still raining down blows as blood started to flow free from Brick’s nose again. “DO IT!”
"Bro, I don't got that much!"
"JUST DO IT!"
Boomer didn't wait for Damien to find his center, one arm gripping him tight as he spun on his heel. "Sorry, D!” With all the momentum of a sudden Mach speed sprint, Boomer Mojo transferred it all into a single terrifying throw.
DarkLord's eyes flared, his full mental focus aimed at the incoming human projectile. A wall of crushing psionic energy materialized in a pale flare of white, enough to flatten Damien into a red smear before he ever made contact.
The eighteen-year-old threw his hands out, eyes glowing just as white as DarkLord’s. Air ripplied around his fingers, telekinesis bursting to life in an identical flare.
Force met force.
And the world rejected it.
The air turned a blinding negative as everything went silent for a fraction of a second — all the noise in the world seemingly deleting itself. The roar of the city, the shrieking of the alien ships, the rumble of Butch’s aura — all of it sucked away into a dead vacuum between Damien and DarkLord.
Then it all came back at once.
In a violent, harmonic screech that tore through the physical plane.
Air shattered like glass, a psionic shockwave rippling through everything.
It hit Brick like a physical blow to the stomach, doubling him over as his ears popped and rang with a whine as he fell back from where he held the villain.
"GAAAH!" Boomer fell to his knees, clutching both hands to his head, and even Butch dropped from DarkLord’s grip, a spasm passing through his body.
Damien hit the asphalt hard, skipping once before rolling to a stop. Unconscious before he stopped moving, a thick line of blood trailed from his nose to his jaw.
Brick finally looked up again, blinking rapidly through the watering sting in his red eyes to see DarkLord reeling.
Like his brother, the blue giant was physically clutching his head, exposed brain sparking that same red and black as before; all that telepathic pressure crushing them gone with just garbled mental static in its place.
I-It worked? Brick's mind raced, mind automatically chewing on the variables even past the ringing in his skull. It was a longshot, a possibility he’d been considering since that first hit of his own but still… A resonance cascade like that... High above the Chicago skyline, the jagged rifts began to seize shut; portals collapsing completely inward and severing the feed of the silver saucer fleets. "Ack..." The same sound echoed weakly from the distant streets, a pathetic and confused high-pitched chatter. "Ack-ack-ack..."
Their TK frequencies… The interaction was honestly far more than Brick had ever been expecting. A perfect waveform collapse, but… but how? Why would they match?
It didn't make sense but Brick just shook his head. No time.
DarkLord stumbled over his own feet, looking no better than a drunk by the time he dropped down to the pavement in an ungraceful thud. He raised both those massive hands high, fingers trembling towards the three boys rising from rubble. “Wait…”The voice was a gasp, physical and mental strength nearly dead from it. “W-wait…”Brick stood up straight, a piece of ash and rubble brushed off his shoulder. He glanced over at Butch, his brother’s fists literally shuddering with green force, before turning to Boomer to see blue lightning chittering against the pavement.
"WAIT?!"
All three voices sounded off as instinct took the wheel.
They moved together; three blurs of red, green, and blue crossing distance in a fraction of a microsecond. They didn't use energy. They didn't need to. Without anything else boosting him further, the alien was just biology.
And they were the RowdyRuff Boys.
Three fists — all of them aimed dead center at his chest — impacted in the same breath.
DarkLord folded around them, pressure and force overwhelming him. With a flare of force and friction, the air superheated to plasma and biology violently became physics; the remains of the dimensional warlord scattered across the empty street in a sudden end.
Brick landed softly on the cracked concrete, staring at the black blood beneath the fingernails and under his torn gloves. “Well, that was gross.”