Greg Vs Raid 9-29

If Greg Veder had to write out who he had the most love for in the whole wide world, his mom would be number one on that list — all the nonexistent i’s in the name ‘Susan Veder’ dotted with bubbly hearts.

Number two on that list would have to be one Axel Ramon.

It wasn’t just because they were his mom and his best friend, respectively.

No, those were just labels.

Important labels, yeah, but still just labels.

At the core of it, he knew the both of them wanted the best for him and loved him back just as much as he did them.

Unfortunately, as much as they loved him — “You fucking out of it, Gee?” — they also loved to nag his ears off.

“Like, are you fuckin’ tellin’ everyone your secret now, brah?” The usual slow drawl completely evaporated into a twitchy panic, Sparky’s voice nearly cracking on every third word. “The actual hell are you on? Is that Emma Barnes?”

“Yes, it’s Emma. Say hi, Emma.”

“…hi?”

One eye twitching, Sparky’s attention snapped between him and her before landing firmly back on him. “That was a rhetorical question.”

Greg shook his head and started walking again. “That’s why I gave you a rhetorical answer.”

“Greg!”

“She was in my house, Sparky!” Greg bit back, arms slick with blood and annoyed by the feel of yellow latex as he marched his way straight past his best friend toward the back hallway. “What was I supposed to do, put on a fake mustache?”

“You don’t bring the Winslow prom queen to the secret lair!” Sparky scrambled after him, his skate shoes squeaking loudly against the pristine floor, his hands flying up in the air.

“Don’t be crazy, man.” Greg tried to force a laugh but it came out just as dry as his voice sounded. “No one’s gonna invite a sophomore to prom.”

“What happened to protocol, Gee!” Sparky kept yelling, keeping pace with him as Emma trudged hesitantly behind the both of them. “You were telling me all this shit about operational security and whatnot and…” Sparky blinked, freezing in place as he realized what Greg had in his hands. “And is that—bro, is she bleeding?”

“Yeah, she got shot.”

“Who got shot?” Sparky jogged up again as Greg didn’t bother to slow down for a second, his eyes darting between the yellow raincoat and Emma hovering three steps behind them like a terrified ghost. “The fuck is that?”

“Sophia Hess.”

Sparky stopped dead in his tracks for a second time, sneakers squealing loud through the hallway. “The track bitch?” 

Greg could only sigh, tilting his head at that specific title. I mean, if you’re gonna call her anything…

“Why are we saving the track bitch?”

“She’s Shadow Stalker.” Greg threw the answer over his shoulder, left foot introducing his soles to the door to their infirmary. 

“WHAT.” If the word could be any less a question, Sparky somehow managed it as he rushed after Greg, chasing him into the brightly lit room.

The medical bay was a sterile oasis, white tiles gleaming under harsh fluorescents where a trio of pristine hospital beds sat in a row, walled off by a glass viewing window. Greg dumped Sophia onto the center bed, pristine paper sheets blooming a dark red.

Sparky skirted the edge of the bed, his hands gripping the roots of his hair. “Brah, you out of your mind? Shadow Stalker? She wanted by the PRT for some bullshit, ain’t she?”

“Hey!” Emma flinched where she stood, voice finally breaking free of a half-frozen throat as she took a step past the doorway. “Sophia’s my best friend!”

“Your best friend a fucking psycho killer!” Sparky spun on her, one accusatory finger already jabbing out. “Didn’t you hear what they’re saying about  her on the news? She was moving like fucking Gavel!”

I dunno. I think Gavel was cooler. Greg stepped back from the bed, eyes on Sophia as he pushed all thoughts of the immortal vigilante from Australia out of his mind. Blood tacky and uncomfortable against his skin, blue eyes slid over to Sparky, outrage flaring in his best friend’s golden eyes in a room that already stunk like a butcher shop. “Sparky, could we table this for… I dunno, a half-hour?”

“Table th-” Sparky snorted back at him. “Gee, she’s a fucking murderer!”

“Yeah, and?”

Those gold eyes visibly brightened, Sparky’s head snapping all the way around to lock right onto him. “And?”

“I mean…” Greg’s hands almost went high enough to touch his hair, the feel of blood dripping off them the only thing that kept them low where they belonged. “So am I.”

The three words dropped into the sterile room like lead weights as Sparky’s jaw snapped shut hard enough for his teeth to click. 

Greg stared right into Sparky’s eyes, the vibrant blue of his own entirely flat as he refused to look away. “Just trying to save you last month, I ripped a guy’s head off, Sparky. Like… like.. I’m wanted for like… legit, homicide…” He almost hissed all three syllables, licking his lips as his mouth went suddenly dry. “You know what I’m about. You’ve known what I’m about. You got on my ass about it before you got kidnapped, man. I don’t know what you think this is. I’m as much of a killer as she is. Hell…” Greg tilted his head, the rasp of the Hardkour persona bleeding into his unmasked voice. “…you are too.”

He regretted it as soon as he said it, another three words forcing Sparky to freeze up again.

Greg’s mouth worked silently, staring as his friend’s throat bobbed and those bright eyes dimmed just a bit. …fuck. That wasn’t true, not really.

Sparky killed, sure, but those were…

Yeah, it’s not what Shadow Stalker did. Fighting to stay alive was way different than what she did and he knew that. “Sparks…”

“No.” Sparky swallowed a mouthful of nothing, eyes on the floor as he crossed his arms over the chest and leaned back until his spine kissed the wall. “Right. Right. You’re right. When are you not right, right? We all killers…” His attention slid over to a still-silent Emma. “…most of us.”

“Yeah, most of us.” Unsure what else to say, Greg turned his attention back to the bed to a silent Sophia. Groans barely audible anymore, her breathing was a shallow wet rattle that meant her lungs were filling up; a quick Analyze enough to let him know her ‘health’ was edging down towards the low double digits. 

“Okaaaaay…” He breathed out the word. “Let’s see how this works on severe ballistic trauma.”

Both red-stained hands raised themselves over her chest as Greg reached into the deep, churning reservoir of energy sitting in his gut.

With a breath, he pulled.

His left hand flared a brilliant gold, his right a fierce blue; Will and Mana hand in hand as he slammed both palms down onto the yellow raincoat, directly over the entry wound.

At once, Sophia’s back arched clean off the hospital bed, spine arched at an angle Greg knew would hurt if she wasn’t dealing with a much worse pain. Her eyes snapped open, whites completely swallowed in a void; pitch-black and darker than ink exactly as he remembered every single time he’d done this.

No sooner than her eyes opened all the way up — “AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” — so did her mouth as Sophia Marjorie Hess let free a scream that was loud enough to make him almost flinch back. 

“Greg!” Emma joined in almost immediately, hands clapped over her ears. She stumbled back, legs seemingly giving out from under her, his name becoming a wordless shriek as she hit the glass of the viewing window. 

What might as well have been motor oil dripped free from Sophia’s nose, blood darker than it had any right to be and too thick for anyone’s comfort pouring down her jaw, gushing from her ears, tearing down her eyes, and spilling from her open mouth. Dark limbs thrashed under the raincoat, Sophia shaking it off her as she spasmed hard enough to force the entire hospital bed to shudder with every kick of her feet against the rattling metal-plastic frame. 

“What the fuck did you do?!” Sparky was pressed flat against the wall but his position didn’t stop him from yelling, eyes wide and panicked as the dark-skinned girl kept on seizing, thick dark-blood mixing with free-flowing red and spattering against once-pristine tiles. “Greg!”

“It’s…it’s normal!” 

Normal was not the best example to describe this, but it was more routine than not.

He’d seen it happen too many times to be all that shaken by it. True, he didn’t know why it made blood black or gave people seizures half the time but he could only really guess at how his powers worked and as for how the body interacted with them… 

Well, he wasn’t a doctor.

“Normal?”

“I promise! Greg shouted back at Sparky as he leaned his weight into his hands, forcing the gold and blue even deeper into the wound as it could go. Teeth gritted, he did his best to hold her down as gently as he could, straining against her own resistance and his own effort to keep her from snapping like a twig under his grip. 

“She’s bleeding black shit out of her eyes! Like Theo!” Sparky jabbed another finger his way, loud enough to be overheard over all the screaming in the room.  “That shit is not normal!”

“You did it too!”

“I did what?”

“Greg, please!” Emma’s sobs came even through her hands, tears smeared over her face as she tried to make herself heard too. “You’re hurting her!” 

“I said… it’s normal!” The volume of his voice was enough to echo off the tile, walls and floor both; completely drowning out everyone else for all of a few seconds. At this point, it really wasn’t though. He had absolutely no idea why so much of Sophia’s blood was coming out black like this. Theo had some leaking out of his eyes and ears and nose, but nothing he couldn’t wipe off his face with a washcloth and some water.

Sparky had about the same but nothing from his face; just mostly the spots where he was injured.

Sophia…

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

Sophia was both to an insane degree and it didn’t seem like it was stopping anytime soon.

But then again, neither of them were capes first, so…

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

The seizure felt like it lasted for an eternity and a half, not that Greg (or anyone else in the room) was in the headspace to count. All he knew was that the seconds dragged forever on as the air in the medical space thickened with the scent of copper and the strange bitter tang that came from the black stuff Greg wasn’t sure was even blood. 

And then, all at once, it stopped.

Sophia’s back finally dropped down to the mattress, limps limp and still as her eyes rolled back and shut. For a few almost-peaceful seconds, the only sound in the room was the heavy, ragged breathing coming from two of the three teenagers watching her.

Greg slowly pulled his hands back as the gold and blue winked out, leaving him just a little drained under the harsh fluorescents glaring down at the absolute massacre in his private infirmary . Even with the raincoat halfway to the floor catching some of it, the tiles had been put through the ringer already.

And the sheets?

The white sheets were downright ruined, Sophia Hess atop them covered in a mixture of red and black fluid, completely still.

“Is she…” 

Greg stared at Sophia’s rising chest, her breath slow and even as Emma’s question went half-spoken just behind him. Another quick ‘Analyze’ told him all he needed to know, the number already jumping up to higher than it was before.

Which was good… and bad.

But right now, he’d focus on the good.

“She’s alive.” Greg let out a heavy breath as he wiped a hand across his sweaty forehead, another sigh leaving him as he felt the streak of red blood smear without even having to look at a mirror or anything. Fuck me, right?

“She’s good.” He bit back a third sigh, stepping forward to look over Sophia’s still body. “At least the wounds are closed, I’m pretty sure.” Only risk is I might have made Ms Psycho Killer more of a hassle to lasso.

“Hey. Sophia.” He took another step, leaning over the bed to check her pulse with one hand reaching out toward her neck. “You good?”

Dark eyes snapped open.

There was no groan, no groggy awakening; nothing like that. 

The survival instinct of a cornered animal was all he could see in her eyes.

Mouth open, Greg barely had a chance to raise his hands as Sophia Hess exploded upward off the mattress. Her hand, still slick with her own blood and stained with so much worse, clutched a combat knife pulled from nowhere.

Before anyone but her had a chance to even scream, the blade buried itself to the hilt directly into Greg Veder’s ribs.