Amaranthine

It was a testament to the stillness of Goliath that none of them had really noticed him during the fight. He’d been there still as a mountain, the whole time. He must have been, because someone that big moving at all would be noticable.

Goliath sat on a wrought iron throne, finger marks still visible in its constituent pieces from where its resident had bent them into shape. Even seated, he cleared 10 feet, when standing, he’d have to be as big as Qi was now. But his size wasn’t the most striking thing. That was his perfection.

From the voice, the reputation, the grotesquely muscled minions, the general vibe cultivated by this guy, she’d expected a monster. A humanoid monster to be sure, but one with muscles that bulged like cysts, body unwilling to contain their unnatural power. Instead he was perfect. Perfect like Cait was perfect. If her girlfriend was the ideal, athletic, feminine form, and Kennedy would fight anyone who said she wasn’t (unless it was to say they preferred Lira’s lithe beauty, which was understandable) then this man was the platonic ideal of a man.

Muscle stretched perfect skin taut, smooth as it presented his power to the world. Kennedy was relatively certain you could slap a diagram of the golden rartio anywhere on his body, and you’d fine something it was impressvely matched to. Even his face, so often the downfall of men, was flawless, and would have turned heads on any movie poster for being a little unbelievable in its beauty.

Honestly, kind of a shame I’m not into dudes at all, or this would probably pass as a religious experience.

There was only one tell to an inner rot in this angelic giant. His blood. Next to him, a transfusion machine pumped away from a needle jammed into his forearm that must have had a gauge the size of Kennedy’s finger. Blood, a red just a shade too dark, and laced with purest black, flowed down it’s tube into a container that seemed to be set up like a water cooler, spigot and all.

In the frantic, scratchy hand of a junkie, someone had written ‘JUICE’ across its front on a piece of tape.

Right. Probably could have predicted that, but not any less gross for being a cliché.

Again, Goliath rumbled, a noise that only built to speech, instesd of starting there; “I give you my blood,” he said, meaning rising along with him as he reached down, yanking the needle from beneath his skin. Despite the visible hole, it only bled for a moment, a thin river of dark blood marring the perfect skin of his forearm. “I share with you my power, and still you fall. This experiment was pointless.”

A wail of fevered despair rose from those of his followers that still drew breath. One of them, broken and bloodied, had clawed their way to him, reaching out for his foot. So quickly that it looked like a glitch in reality, Goliath’s foot occupied the space the man’s head had a moment prior as his lungs imitated an earthquake in disgust.

It was at that point Cait apparently remembered she hated to let villians monologue, and launched herself at the sublime giant. Despite the immense power Kennedy knew her strikes contained, Goliath took it with the same disdain Cait showed her foes, the audacious blonde actually bouncing off after landing a perfect straight to his solar plexus.

“Uh….” She said, looking around the room at her friends now that what was really her only move hadn’t worked. Qi and Breastman were next, the monster using Qi’s shoulder to whip himself forward. As hard as Cait hit, BREAST MAN hit harder, and those tentacles actually managed to move the giant, if not break his skin. But that speed, a speed that defied his size, was not to be undrestimated. In an instant, even under the rain of blows 15 tentacles could provide, Goliath held half of them in his hand, cracking them like a whip. The wave stunned Breastman, and Goliath swung him like a flail, Kennedy’s mind filling with the coming horror of her friend splattering against the concrete floor.

Cait might have been useless in hurting Goliath, but she was never useless in protectjng her friends. She boomed out, intercepting Breastman as he was swung, stealing some of the lethal momentum by impacting laterally, but still hard enough to rip away the tentacles by which Goliath held him. Friend in hand, she skidded to a halt behind the giant, Breastman’s pitiful hisses of pain audible to all of them.

All of that had happened before Qi even reached their foe, the last real chance of this fight being resolved in a conventional manner. She had better luck. Goliath threw an almost casual warding punch that cracked against the scale of her shoulder, killing her charge, but Qi was more than pure strength. For one, she was the best fighter in the group, besides maybe Kennedy, and two, she bore claw and fang straight out of myth. As those claws struck out, drawing the first blood from Goliath not given freely, Kennedy realized they were going at this action movie style, and giving this guy a series of 1 v 1’s was liable to get them all killed.

She caught Willow’s eye, getting a nod in return, though the woman’s calm expression for the first time bore a hint of fear. She followed in Kennedy’s charge, muttering something as she ran.

“You’ll need to drop the link with Cait,” Willow’s voice said, out of nowhere and directly into Kennedy’s ear. To some extent, that seemed insane. Kennedy was charging at a man who represented, far and away, the greatest physical threat she’d yet encountered. To give up the near invulnerability Cait gifted her in the face of that seemed insane. But that was it, wasn’t it? The greatest physical threat, yes, and she was the best chance the team had to meet it with metaphysical means.

She felt a burst of concern from her girlfriend in the instant before she let their link drop, the first time in months. Immediately, she felt as empty as when Cait saw fit to tease her during more intimate moments, the same feeling that would cause her to beg to be filled once more. She pushed that feeling aside. It did not serve her. As she reached Goliath, still busy with Qi, she focused on Willow’s power.

Goliath’s fore-spirit was far less pronounced than his minions had been, granting miliseconds of warning, so slight as to only be usable by someone with the reaction time of a master martial artist. Fortunately, Kennedy fit that bill, so when the ghost of a front kick filled the same space as her head, she was able to move out of the way just enough that she got a cut on the cheek from a jagged nail, rather than a caved in face.

She ignored that cut, concerning as it was to once more have skin that could be cut, darting between Goliath’s legs to drag an ethereal hand through his knee.

It wasn’t like it had been for Willow, where she had plucked soul from body as easily as ripping off a piece of cotton candy. This felt more like trying to push her fingers into the wood of a sturdy branch, an effort only possible due to an uncommon will and borrowed strength. She had no clue if that was a function of her amateurish attempt, the man’s own soul, or both. Regardless, she felt a soothing wave from Willow, and a burst of power as the woman worked her magic to more fully open their link.

As Kennedy’s ghostly talon came out the other side of Goliath’s knee, the team was treated to the first sound of actual pain from Goliath, a deep roar that shook the dust from the rafters and rattled the panes in the windows. Still, the injury to his soul hadn’t been a decisive one, the bright white fog in Kennedy’s claw disappating after only a moment.

Regardless, it did seem to have done something. That knee creaked now, moving ever so much slower as it shifted to counter Qi’s attacks. Unfortunately, making Goliath angry had the opposite effect as it did on most dangerous combatants. Typically, the people you really had to watch out for were skilled. With those, making them angry was a coup, introducing the opportunity for unforced errors.

Goliath was not skilled. Instead, he was the ultimate instinctual fighter, moving with speed, strength and ferocity that only grew with his emotional state. Qi, for all her skill and strength, could not match his speed as he pressed her, blows coming so quick the sound of impact from one had not yet finished sounding when the next struck. Qi was valiant, but she was instantly on the defensive, and all it took was one lucky blow, cracking perfectly against her jaw, to send her to the floor, bottom half of her skull no longer aligning with the top.

Kennedy’s feelings for Qi were still complicated. Maybe they always would be. Certainly, the superior smirk the dragon wore as a matter of course didn’t fill her with the same warm fuzzies as Lira’s bright smile, or the hearthfire of Cait’s grin. But seeing her like that; proud, beautiful, face, broken and bloodied…. Well, it wasn’t a feeling of satisfaction that filled Kennedy. Instead, she thought of the soft smile Qi had given that girl in the boba shop yesterday. Thought that unless Kennedy nutted the fuck up, no one might ever see that smile again.

And Kennedy got angry.