Rainbows and Apathy
Gemini jumps, whipping around and swinging the axe. Instead of the blade meeting flesh, it meets the concrete, a painful reverberation echoing through her body.
The world was only a little melty. Nothing she isn't used to at this point.
"Gemini? What's wrong?" CuteGuy calls out, moving towards her.
"Tiger Moth's tryna confuse me. Don't worry, I'm basically immune at this point."
HotGuy grins, surprisingly, "That's my combat god. Let's beat this freak's ass."
The Tiger Moth, or as the Government described him; One Blessed By The Divine, suddenly whirls down from the sky, a mildly insulted look on his face — quite a lot of expression for someone who only has one iris in his head.
"Very, very rude, Scar." The Moth says, rolling his eyes. He pulls on the stars forming a crown around his head, tugging one down and holding it in his hand. "I don't really wanna fight today, just wanted to scare you a little bit," he says, staring into the mini sun in his hands.
CuteGuy responds by shooting him point-blank in the forehead. The stupid stars spin around The Tiger Moth's head to block the bullet, reflecting right off and bouncing onto the floor. "Gosh, choosing violence today aren't we, Grian?"
"I'm sorry, who?" CuteGuy asks, staring The Moth down. "I don't seem to recognize who that is."
The Moth clicks his tongue distastefully, spinning around in the air. "Don't play dumb.~" he cheerfully sings, the hint of poison still lingering behind his voice.
CuteGuy rolls his eyes, "That's ridiculous."
Gemini, despite feeling a bit nauseous from the flashing rainbows flooding her vision, started formulating a plan. It couldn't be that hard to beat the man, after all, she had killed him once or twice. From previous encounters, she knew for a fact that The Moth prefers to use psychological warfare instead of actually fighting. When he did need to fight, that's when he started using the stars. Seemingly, they could transform into practically anything; from shurikens to a full-on sword.
She wasn't sure if the stars were only attached to him, or if they worked for any person. Most likely, it would be the latter, because long ago he was known for his honourability, so, of course, he'd have something that The Moth could share with his teammates. She wasn't sure if it was true, but Gemini was very willing to find out.
Looking HotGuy and CuteGuy in the eyes, well, only HotGuy's eyes, she nods toward The Moth. Distract him, please.
HotGuy blinks in her direction, like a word of confirmation before snatching an arrow, pulling the bowstring back and letting loose. It doesn't do much damage if even any at all. But that seemed to annoy The Tiger Moth enough to finally stop flapping around like a damsel in distress.
The Tiger Moth sighs exasperatedly, "Ow. I didn't want to do this, Scar." he pulls the arrow of harming out of his ribs and makes a hand gesture. The stars spin down like a constellation, forming a bow of The Moth's own.
There were now two stars left.
One that was 100% protecting The Moth's brains, that was for sure.
The other though, was sitting behind his head, threaded between teal locks.
Gemini watches as CuteGuy aims his gun at The Moth's head, while HotGuy flies up, black wings galliantly carrying him up.
She just had to find one second of weakness, that's it.
An array of bullets, whizzes of weapons being thrown, and a dozen golden arrows later, Gemini was starting to get tired. The rainbow goop was starting to blur her vision, leaving her only a circle of coherent vision.
The Tiger Moth's illusions were akin to drugs -- Euphoric at first, but five seconds later, you're dope sick; painful headaches, chills, and maybe even vomiting, considering that the strobe of colours already made her nauseous.
Gemini still had a handful of minutes left before she would need to retreat. Too much and it would be no good.
Finally, after The Moth runs out of arrows to fire, he lunges towards HotGuy, trying to wrangle the taller to the ground, grasping at the quiver on HotGuys back.
"No, no! Get off." CuteGuy exclaims worriedly. His stinger swings over, stabbing The Moth in the shoulder, or so he thought.
The Moth had backed away at the very last second, leaving HotGuy on the ground, stung. By CuteGuy's venom. "Watchers, HotGuy?! I'm sorry."
HotGuy doesn't respond, because until the venom wore off, he would be practically rendered useless unless CuteGuy started ordering him around, which Gemini severely doubted.
In the air with a shocked expression like he was even surprised he didn't get stung, hovered The Moth, chuckling to himself.
Still, The Moth was rendered still.
Wait.
He's not moving!
Gemini buzzes her nimble wings, axe dragging across the ground as she launches herself at The Tiger Moth. Unevenly, maybe. But you can blame that on the stupid fuzz covering her vision.
The Tiger Moth gasps, trying to wriggle out of her grasp before resorting to a dropkick, sending Gemini to the concrete below.
She catches herself, flying at The Moth again. Gemini tumbles in the air before swinging the axe over her head and putting all her strength into a blow. The Moth barely catches the blade of the axe, sinking through his gloves and into the flesh. Blood and ichor spilled out of the wound, gold and bright red swirling together.
The axe is tossed aside. Well, Gemini wouldn't mind a bit of hand-to-hand combat. She throws a jab to The Moth's face, following up with a reverse. The Moth winces, backing up and pulling off a hook kick, gracefully turning in the air due to the lack of ground. Almost gracefully -- It would be considered graceful if his arm wasn't dripping with blood.
Gemini grits her teeth, the melting feeling sinking further into her head. It was getting harder to stay upright, but once again, nothing she hadn't fought through before. While still facing her opponent, she whizzes herself higher and higher into the air. She hadn't tried doing what she was about to do, but it never hurt to try.
She doesn't ever think about it much, but Gemini isn't just any dragonfly -- she's a green darner dragonfly. This means that with the right conditions, she could travel at 56 kilometres an hour.
Gemini covers her face with her forearms, angles herself downwards, and starts her descent.
She's going down, down, down. So fast that if Gemini tried to, she wouldn't be able to stop. But she didn't want to stop.
This was for Scar, for his mission, for hers, for Pearl.
Everything comes to a sudden stop as she collides with The Tiger Moth, an audible crack as The Moth falls backwards. He hits the ground with a thunk, taking a second before sitting up. One out of the two last stars was being used as a force field around him, but one glimmering hunk of concentrated power wasn't enough to stop some sort of impact.
The arm covering his face was shattered, absolutely shattered. It was bent in every wrong way, the forearm splintered to what could be considered two.
Gemini lands on the ground, smiles at HotGuy's jaw which was practically on the ground at this point, and CuteGuy who was giving an approving round of applause.
She takes the star off of The Moth's head, holding it in her hand.
It was warm but cold at the same time, the molten fire burning her eyes. Gemini tries to turn it into something, but nothing works.
Gemini almost punches The Moth when she hears him giggle at her struggle with the glowing object. However, she doesn't because she was genuinely starting to feel kind of bad.
"Gem, have you ever considered the phrase, 'wish upon a star'?" The Moth asks, rummaging through his pockets.
"You're just, giving me the answer?" she mumbles, confused. Gemini tries it anyway, wishing for a sword and gasping as the constellation bow abandoned on the ground shapeshifted into a sword, a long blade extending from the star she was holding.
It worked.
"Pretty isn't it?"
Gemini kind of wanted to end The Moth's life, but then again... He did just give her the key to using this thing.
"Can I have it back now?" he asks, sitting on the ground like all the bones in his arm hadn't exploded.
"Maybe If you were a better person." Gemini grins. The Moth groans, hands in his pockets before pulling out a potion bottle. Glossy and extremely colourful. He stares Gemini right in the eyes as he pops off the cork and downs the whole thing, very casually.
Then, he snapped his fingers, and she couldn't see a thing. She could see something; herself, but everything else was drenched in a radioactive goop.
"What... Is this? If you think this is really gonna work on me then-"
A wave of pain and nausea floods her body, wrecking her head and causing her to stumble around.
"Gemini?" she hears someone call out. Vaguely, a panel of strobing lights shifts, moving towards her.
Her throat is starting to hurt, clogging up any words that she wanted to explain. Gemini?? wobbles forward, collapsing onto the ground.
Was she falling? Maybe she was falling. Gemini wasn't exactly sure at this point. Each lock of rainbow swirls and stripes bulged out at her like hands, reaching to tear her apart.
Finally, a strand of mildly coherent words fall out of her mouth, "Sc- The Tiger Moth- Scott... I don't know, I don't know what's wrong!" she cries out, looking for her friends, sidekicks, anyone. Instead, everything was a dreadful spectrum of colours. It hurt, her head hurt.
"Gem, this is a little pitiful, isn't it? Land's best fighter, reduced to stumbling around like a brainless mosquito."
"What the fuck did you do?! Why can't I-" Spinning, spinning... Gem's mouth filled with saliva, stars filling her vision as she keeled over. She gags, once, twice, before vomiting up anything she had eaten that day.
It was horribly acidic and burned her throat. Gemini coughs and sputters as she staggers back up, desperately trying to erase the taste of bile from her mouth, "Gah, what is happening, why can't I see anything, where is everyone?!"
The nausea was so much worse than usual, dreadfully worse. Head poundingly worse. It made Gem want to cut her own head off.
"---- Gem! Are you ----- Gem, respond, please!"
"Oh, eugh." Scott mutters, distastefully stepping around Gem's soup of stomach acids, "Joel's concoctions really do work! I should thank him, do you think I should thank him?"
There, there He was. He didn't look much like a villain when she thinks about it, more like a graceful angel here to give you a baptism or something. One eye was missing a pupil while the other glimmered gleefully, like diamonds. Massive moth wings draped around His body like a cloak. He looked at Gem curiously, like she was a science experiment. His arm was fine now, smooth skin covering anything she thought would be there.
"Gem, oh Gem am I happy to finally talk to you like mature adults! It's been like... few months I'd wager. Not very nice to try to murder me at first sight though." Scott sings, circling Gem.
Gem steps backwards, trying to squint through the dizzying maze of rainbows, "I thought you were all about honour, what happened?... God, this sucks."
Scott blinks, cocking his head to the side as his wings shoot out in protest, "Honourable? Yes, I'm being honourable. I'm helping you Gem. Your friend over there -- he's gonna kill you, do you know that?"
"Who- No, that doesn't matter. They wouldn't hurt me, not one of them. Grian and Scar wouldn't do that. Can you let me out of this nightmare now, please?!" Gem squeaks, painfully desperate as she curls up into herself, closing her eyes and trying to rid herself of rainbow spirals. Even when she closed her eyes, she could still see it as clear as day. It was horrible.
Scott clicks his tongue distastefully, "I'm only doing this because we were good friends and I'm deciding to ignore the fact that you tried to murder me a few minutes ago. Just watch out." Then He snaps his fingers and the strobe of colours disappears, but Scott the Tiger Moth doesn't. He dusts his pants off, still sitting on the ground.
Gemini blinks a few times, and she looks around, realizing that she was standing in the same spot the whole time. The star-sword was still in her hand, and everything seemed painfully normal. Well; aside from the bile dripping down her chin, and the concerned look CuteGuy's face. He was knelt next to a still-paralyzed HotGuy who was propped up on a wall, staring blankly ahead of himself.
She wipes away the bile on her face before being embraced into a tight hug, "Gem- Gemini! You weren't responding... What happened!?" CuteGuy exclaims worriedly before backing up and wrinkling his nose once he realizes he's stepped in vomit.
"Ew! Er, you got freakishly still, then randomly kneeled over and vomited everywhere -- Are you okay?" CuteGuy asks, wings buzzing softly, "I wasn't really sure how to help you, I was about to call the police."
Suddenly, as Gemini was mid-response, a flash of red and blue was spotted in the corner of her eye. It scares her so badly that she almost tumbles over, but she realizes that it was only the Heroes, at least one of them.
"Gosh, Scott! What in the world are you doing all the way out here?" Ren says, stepping out of a car and holding out a hand. The Moth takes it and gets pulled up.
"It's complicated," he says with a joyful tone. Ren sighs and pulls The Moth into the back of the car and goes into the front seat himself shortly before sticking his head out the window.
"Hey friends, just saying, it's kind of illegal to assault these guys, especially after the sun has set." Ren calls out accusingly.
CuteGuy gasps, before deflating exasperatedly. "Dude! He literally tried to kill us first."
The Moth is seen peering over Ren's shoulder, "He took the first shot!" he sings.
"If you're seen out again, I will arrest you!" Ren says with a toothy smile, lips pulling back to reveal his animalistic teeth. Then, the car swerves around, speeding down the road and into the distance.
CuteGuy sighs, tugging at a newly formed hole in his outfit, "I think I understand what you mean by the Heroes and Government having a maximum of one brain cell."
He walks over to HotGuy, his eyes shimmering a royal purple, maybe more than normal? "You can be normal, or something. I don't know, er, abracadabra!"
Somehow, it seems to work as HotGuy gasps and sits up, frantically looking around. "Gem! You're okay, gosh what happened?!... Did I miss everything? I'm so sorry I-"
"Hey, it's fine! I'm fine, he's," Gemini waves at CuteGuy "-fine. So don't worry too much, 'kay?"
HotGuy relaxes, slowly standing up and stretching his wings out, "Being paralyzed by wasp-y boy over there is quite the experience." he nudges CuteGuy, then Gemini on the shoulder, "Welp, let's go home now?"
"Yes, please... Let me get my axe first."