Starstruck vs. Hecaton (private)
February 5th, 2020
"Alright, split up! Firenze's team to the right here, mine straight ahead!" Celine's team, consisting of Storm, Lynn, Coren, Iris, Lyra and Bat-Erdene, followed her through the empty streets of the nighttime Los Angeles outskirts. Normally, the city would be bustling even at night, but an alarm had alerted the citizens and made them stay inside for now. Team Michelangelo, with Pea, Lukas, Asil, Ayan and Isra, took off into the alleyway to their right, chasing one half of the villain duo Class 1B was currently fighting.
Team Celine, meanwhile, chased the other half, Hecaton, further down the streets. Two thin appendages shot out of Hecaton's body, spikes forming on the ends of the appendages and embedding themselves into the building to their left - Hecaton used them to swing to the left at high speed and enter the alleyway there. Celine quickly slammed her foot into the ground, creating a curved slope of rock ahead of them that the students could run along. "Starstruck, use that to build speed!" Bat-Erdene complied, pulling ahead of the group. "Right. Let 1B's number one show you how it's done!"
He hunched over while sprinting, and once he'd turned in the right direction, touched his hands to the ground and swung his legs forward through them. A dark blue blaze, tiny stars bursting off it, enveloped him, and he flew forward, right leg extended ahead. He collided with Hecaton, knocking the villain forward - Hecaton dug two more of the appendages into the ground to stabilise himself, and a third shot at Bat-Erdene, grazing his foot. "Right!" Celine yelled out, and Bat-Erdene complied, diving to the right as a boulder soared throughout the alleyway towards Hecaton. The villain used five tendrils to break it apart, and then continued sprinting away down the alley.
"Are you okay, Starstruck?" Iris asked, glancing down at his bleeding foot. "Yes, I am alright! Let's keep going!" Bat-Erdene gave chase, along with the rest of their team. "Leading him down West Heald right now." Michelangelo spoke over their comms. "Affirmative. We'll use the dead end there to trap them both, alright?" Celine replied. A quick affirmation from Michelangelo, and their chase continued.
"Maelstrom, Nexus! Cut off his path to force him right!" The twins complied, Storm picking Lynn up and dashing ahead. Lynn bent two lampposts to block off the path to the left, while Storm jumped ahead from the left, almost catching up to Hecaton. Their plan worked, and Hecaton took a turn to the right. One spiked tendril shot backwards, nearly perforating Bat-Erdene's chest - thankfully, Coren responded in time, ripping a chunk of metal off a nearby garbage bin and using it to block the attack. "Thank you, Coren. By the by, how about I cook you all some of my world-renowned delicious steaks when we get home?" Bat-Erdene's cooking was not world-renowned by any means, of course, but he was the only member of the class that could cook well.
In the distance, Team Celine could hear the commotion caused by Team Mich's chase - they'd now arrived at the same street. Ayan's vines whipped forward, striking Scimitar in the back of the head. Naturally, Ayan was too weak to do much damage with a direct strike like that, but it did annoy him quite a bit. The two teams reunited as the two villains ran into a nearby alleyway, the exact dead end that 1B had planned for them to walk into.
"Good work, class!" Michelangelo praised them. "Ready to finish this, brother?" The class dashed into the narrow alleyway after them. A white line appeared in the air - two seconds later, an invisible force sliced there, cutting open the unsuspecting Pea's arm. "Owie!" In a less serious situation, Celine would've laughed at that proclamation, but now she simply remained alert of what she presumed to be Scimitar's ability. When the two villains spotted the dead end, they turned around. "Playtime's over, little shits. Get out of our way or die!"
Hecaton summoned six of the thin appendages, each having fists on their ends. He used them to punch the class at long range - this worked at first, but Lukas quickly learned to used his fibres to cut through the appendages. Lynn threw a garbage bin ahead, which pushed Hecaton back, after which Storm hit him with an uppercut. Celine kicked a boulder at Scimitar, which was quickly followed up by a blast of water created by Michelangelo. Scimitar blocked the water with an arm, using their sword in the opposing hand to slice at Michelangelo's chest.
Illusions caused Hecaton to misstep and topple over, after which a vine paired up with one of Asil's lenses to throw Hecaton into the wall to the right. Another one of Starstruck's meteor kicks hit Hecaton in the chest, after which Bat-Erdene jumped off and went for another kick to the face. "Alright, stop! I surrender!" Hecaton threw his hands up into the air, much to Scimitar's surprise. "You're not allowed to keep beating me up if- if I give up, right?"
Bat-Erdene landed in front of Hecaton. "...That is the right decision. Put your hands behind your back." Hecaton looked up at Bat-Erdene, whispering something under his breath. "Ah, the beauty of budding heroes. Always so naive." One spiked tendril tore through Bat-Erdene's chest, launching him across the alleyway and pinning him to the opposing wall.
Another tendril arced up, striking him in the side and lifting him up into the air.
A white line appeared over Bat-Erdene's neck.
Pea ran up the alleyway's wall, hand extended. A burst of air sent Michelangelo flying upwards.
Two seconds had passed, and an invisible force sliced over the white line.
To Ayan Eannatum, everything went dark for a moment, and she saw it. Her legs moved up a glass staircase. This wasn't real, of course not, but it felt real. As she climbed higher and higher over the city, as the air grew colder and the tears streaming down her face began to gnaw at her skin, the staircase began to crumble. Before Ayan hit the ground, she snapped back to reality.
The vines she tried to summon wouldn't come. With a disconnect, she stared at the thick, heavily spiked wooden appendages in front of her. Had she made those? There was only one correct answer, but it didn't register. The next moment, she was splattered with not only Starstruck's blood, but Hecaton and Scimitar's as well. Her throat hurt. She'd been screaming, without recognising she'd been doing so - all she'd heard was her own heartbeat, and every other sound had been drowned out.
Celine threw up. 'Don't look. Don't look. Don't look.' That phrase echoed throughout her head. A red smear ran along the alleyway's wall. His body was still pinned to the wall, and his head... Celine retched. She looked the other way, saw Michelangelo, petrified. He needed her. Her team needed her. She stood up. Walls of rock obscured what had happened to Bat-Erdene for a moment. She glanced at the two villains' bodies, and quickly used her comms to call for a medical crew.
It took Roboutique five seconds to arrive - another ten seconds later, and the medical crew had arrived as well. Together with Celine, she escorted the rest of 1B.
February 6th, 2020
Michelangelo was the only one awake inside the school's medbay.
Quietly, he looked around. Exhaustion had caused everybody to fall asleep sooner or later. It was roughly 6 AM now, but Michelangelo had awoken after an hour or so of sleep. His mind did... nothing. He couldn't bring himself to think about anything - his thoughts would snap back to that red streak along the wall. And every time they did, he wouldn't be able to stop shaking, like he did now. Michelangelo tried to control his breathing, but it was futile.
Without fanfare and silently, Class 1B, the class that'd only just become a close team and found their flow in working together, fell to bits. The only ones who still spoke to one another were Lynn and Storm - every other member of the class didn't exchange a word to anyone besides the counselors they were forced to talk to. There was a mutual understanding among the class - they were all to blame, and Bat-Erdene's death was everyone's fault. It might not have been true, but every member of the class felt that way, and everyone knew the rest shared the sentiment.
Only one thing broke the silence. When the sun had gone down again, Lyra's sharp hic echoed through the room. Then, Michelangelo's, and then Pea's. Within a few seconds, every member of the class had begun sobbing alone in their designated hospital beds, without comforting or looking at one another.
February 7th, 2020
The students had been discharged from the medbay, only returning for checkups every few hours. Marie Durand entered Stonehearthe's medbay during a checkup, looking at Class 1B with sadness in her eyes. This was the first time she'd seen them since it happened. What was she supposed to even say? This is a part of heroism, the most terrible part, but that wouldn't be any consolation. These types of losses were common in the world they'd signed up for, but it wasn't something one could ever recover from. The names of those she'd lost still echoed throughout her mind every single day. "Students..." Before she could get started, a man put a hand on her shoulder. As she spun around, she gasped. "Marcellus? What's-" "Marie. Bring Lynn Cloula, and then accompany me and Doctor Stephen here to a private room." "Y-yes, sir."
Fifteen minutes later, the four of them stood around a round table. The most powerful man on Earth, Earth's smartest man, a disgraced former hero and a student. Lynn couldn't read Marcellus or Lasswell's minds - important people would get a temporary inoculation to protect them from telepaths each year, and trying to read their minds would cause a short-lived, sharp pain.
"Doctor Stephen. Begin." "I have heard of your... predicament. We have a solution." Lasswell pulled out a spherical device. "This can augment miss Cloula's telepathic abilities by a lot for one short moment. Make her powerful enough to... overwrite her classmates' minds. Make them forget about Bat-Erdene Davadoorjiin." "N-no! Absolutely not. This experience may be traumatic, but you can't just have my students forget one of their friends!" Marie argued, but Marcellus Brand cleared his throat. "Even without a sliver of media presence, Stonehearthe's Class 1B is worth millions of dollars. Now, they're completely falling apart. If they jeopardise their careers now, their future will be completely ruined. These bright, young students, destroying themselves over something that we can fix. We can't have that, now, can we?"
Ayan burst into the room, her class standing behind her. "Over my dead body! Bat-Erdene was our friend! What happened was terrible, but you can't just erase him from our memories!" Marcellus shook his head. "Was this room not supposed to be private, miss Durand?" "M-my apologies, sir." "Marie! Are you just going to let him do that? C'mon-" Ayan looked behind her. "Michelangelo! Celine! Say something!"
Michelangelo looked back at Ayan blankly. "I... don't know. Just... do whatever. I don't understand." "Maybe..." Celine started. She couldn't bring herself to say another word. She and her brother were the tacticians of the team - if anyone was in a position to have saved Bat-Erdene, it was her. Could she let her mistake ruin her friends' careers? Ayan looked at the two in disbelief, and then back at the rest of her class. Everyone's eyes seemed sunken in, and no one but Storm met her gaze. "Ayan's right. I-I don't wanna forget Bat-Erdene! H-he'd always bake the most delicious chocolate chip cookies, and he was always there for us when we needed him-" As she looked back at her classmates, they remained inert.
Lynn hadn't said a word. Her hand hovered close to the orb Lasswell had placed on the table. "Don't you dare." Ayan said, stepping closer, Storm standing next to her. As Lynn's hand moved downwards, a sharp bunch of cactus spikes shot at her, causing many cuts on her face - from behind Ayan, a sharp piece of rock flew ahead, causing another gash on Lynn's face. Ayan, Storm and Celine ran forward. Right before Storm could grab Lynn by the collar, she fell to her knees, and so did every other member of Class 1B, besides Lynn. Her face strained as she utilised her power to its maximum extent.
"...Me too, Lynn. Please." Marie spoke. Lynn's focus broke for a split second at that, but she complied and continued. Memories of Bat-Erdene melted away, and the pain disappeared. Class 1B consisted of twelve students.
"Great work, miss Cloula." Marcellus Brand started. "As a thank-you for this favour we've extended to you, I expect your full cooperation if the Brand Conglomerate ever requires it."