High in a tower overlooking the city, a young girl looked down from a balcony. Her jade hair blew in the slight breeze. Barely of age, a terrible understanding shines in her eyes.
Behind, her mother stands over her, looking in the same direction. Towards a billowing, fiery smoke rising from the downtown districts of Forumscant. The distant sounds of heavy weapons fire and the rolling thunder of explosions reaches their ears.
"Daddy will protect us from him," the girl says. "Won't he, mommy?"
"Of course," Mephit answers. "Hasn't he always?"
The child hears uncertainty in her mother's voice.
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Around the Last Rider, there was only carnage to behold. He was surrounded by high rise buildings, some intact, the faces of others annihilated by his onslaught. Throughout the city street on which he stood, tanks and other military vehicles lay shattered to oblivion in his wake. The broken bodies of Forumscant law enforcement and military personnel littered the street in either direction as far as the eye could see. Blood ran red into the cracks of the spiderwebbed pavement, sealing the foundations of the city with the dying breaths of its occupants.
This force had been dispatched to attack him, but had not succeeded. It did not matter; they were not meant to succeed. This was desperation, a move made out of fear. A tactic meant to delay the Last Rider's slow, deliberate pace toward the tower.
In the carnage of shattered steel and glass, of burning fuel and bleeding bodies, the Last Rider again began his deliberate walk before he was once more interrupted.
A man blinked into existence in front of him. He wore a ban saber; one of the Admins of Forumscant. A new face that the Rider had not known thus far.
"You'll go no further," announced Pain.
When he began to take a step, the Admin pulled his weapon-a pitch black ban saber, a weapon designed by Cucumba himself. Carried by the Administration of Forumscant for the purpose of discipline, the weapon was a sign of authority that often instilled fear and obedience in all who were threatened with it.
The entity known as the Last Rider found it to be a meaningless toy, and knowing it posed no threat, the dark one began to step forward.
Pain knew who he was dealing with, but despite tales of his earth-shattering power, the Last Rider emanated no notable energy signatures. To Pain, he seemed to possess no conventional powers at all. But the Last Rider's power, as he had been told, was not conventional by any means. The carnage around the two was a testament to his secret, destructive force. His mission was simple; to delay the Last Rider as much as he could while the rest of the city was evacuated. Hopefully he would be able to last until Cucumba returned from wherever he had disappeared to after the rumble's close and the destruction of the fight club arena.
Some thought perhaps the Jade Behemoth was already no more. Others still thought he had abandoned Forumscant after the Rider had taken the rumble. It had been difficult keeping the population under control with their beloved hero's disappearance; but now the Last Rider had come to seize the day and the rumors had proven to be somewhat true. Cucumba was nowhere to be found.
Pain stepped lightly around his opponent, sizing him up. Plenty apparent to the Admin was that the Last Rider was clearly at a massive physical advantage. Seven feet tall, and even though a leather duster with spiked metal shoulderplates covered his physique it was no secret that he was a monstrous specimen. From under the brim of his black leather hat, eyes that had seen each death in the history of creation looked on, cold and unyielding.
Pain knew why he was chosen for this sacrificial deed. His abilities to bend light to his will made him the ideal candidate to stall the Godless Reaper. The tales of the destructive force exhibited in the Royal Rumble were still fresh in his mind, and he knew perfectly well that any blow from the rapidly strengthening Rider could be potentially fatal. He would have to be at his best.
Tall buildings surrounding them on both sides, both fighters looked at one another. It was the Last Rider who struck first.
Raising an open palm, a momentous light grew from the Phenom's hand. With horror Pain could make out the screaming skull of a lost soul in the center of the purple flame. In a moment the swirling violet mass blasted towards the Light Warrior, with speed and purpose all too clear.
The screaming soul blast burned clear through the chest of it's target, slamming into an unknown point aways down the street and detonating with horrific, ground-rumbling force.
As the light copy he'd blasted disappeared in a flash of white, the Last Rider sharpened himself. Looking around quickly, he knew that he had been deceived by his opponent. How many more variations of the same trick could Pain manage?
It was not until the Last Rider looked up that Pain decided to strike. From a rooftop, Pain leapt, black ban saber unleashed and prepared to strike.
From another rooftop, another copy leapt, equally eager to draw blood. And from a third area across the street, yet another copy descended into the fray.
The Last Rider, for all his supernatural strength, could not detect a difference between any of the three Pains flying toward him. All held a ban saber, all seemed equal in their physicality. Silently damning the decision to render himself unto the physical world and limiting his supernatural senses, the Last Rider reacted with shocking precision. Three quick screaming souls flew from his outstretched hands, soaring upward and finding their marks with ease. Again, each copy died in a shattering of luminescent white light, leaving no trace. None of them had made it even halfway down.
The real Pain had already accomplished his goal, however; the Rider had been suitably distracted. With quickness unparalleled, another Pain ran out towards the Rider, who still stared skyward. Ban saber unsheathed, he let out a biting battle cry as he took a mad dash toward his opponent.
The Last Rider began to lower his view to ground level but he was already too late; Pain's ban saber was already whipping in a flurry. The first slash burnt across the Rider's chest, what would normally be a halving blow to most other beings causing notably less damage to the Phenom. The blade passed through his body, damaging all it touched, but it did not cut cleanly as normal; undaunted Pain's single-handed swordplay continued. The Light Warrior spun, ducked and dashed around the larger opponent with stunning quickness, laying slash after slash into the Rider's body.
More disturbing than the distilled potency of the saber was the Last Rider's reaction. Grunted slightly with each swipe, Pain found that his target made no noticeable outcry of pain or rage. Though each slash drew misty squirts of viscous blackened blood from the Dead Man, he gave little indication that the cuts were anything but superficial.
A lesser man would have been cut to ribbons. But Pain had known ahead of time that the Rider's unique necrobiological makeup would react differently to all manner of attacks. The only fatal flaw of the being that the Admin could hope to exploit was the fact that it had been designed to emulate human form.
Could he bleed to death? Could he be blinded? Could he be reasoned with?
Pain's final slash was a furious uppercut that crossed the face of the Dark Phenom with a glancing blow across the eye. Finishing the impressive flurry with a roundhouse kick to the face, the Light Warrior sent the charred and scarred Rider reeling.
Taking only a single step back before ceasing to stagger, the Last Rider quickly recovered. The monstrous fighter stared straight at Pain before the Light Warrior made another assault, dropping a second powerful roundhouse kick into the behemoth's jaw and sending him back another single step.
The Rider's leather hat, sliced by the saber, flew off after the kick, turning to dust as it fluttered in the air. Now Pain stood a few feet from the monster, and with no brim to hide his gaze, the Last Rider's menacing face was a scowl that instilled an irrational fear in even the resolute Administrator. A blackened swipe of charred flesh marked the Phenom's face where Pain's blade had swiped.
The subtle purple glow radiating from the Grim Warrior's figure was barely detectable, but his furious expression told Pain that a brutal attack was coming. Unable to sense the Dead Man's soul energies charging, the Admin had to rely on gut instinct.
A screaming beam of violet souls blasted forth from the Rider's cupped hands with a sudden shockwave. Pain quickly leapt to his right, commando rolling out of the way, regaining his feet in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of the raw power with which he dealt.
This latest attack was a menagerie of the screaming projectile souls, skull-like formations writhing on the head of the powerful beam. It had erupted forth like violet hellfire, with next to no warning; it's shockwave carried large vehicles, civilian and military alike, from the ground and sent them hurtling like children's toys. Windows of nearby buildings shattered at the inaudible screams of the passing beam. And in a split second it was gone, in its wake a smoldering streak of molten asphalt and obliterated debris.
Pain would have been awed but his instincts knew better than to be distracted with such a dangerous opponent. He was already up on his feet and running by the enemy, pushing as hard as his legs could carry him.
Whirling, the Rider unleashed a double fisted barrage of the screaming skull projectile blasts, each erupting from his palms like a flaming comet across the skies of hell. Pain ran up the undercarriage of an overturned tank, splitting into many light copies of himself and leaping in as many different directions as he could manage. The Last Rider was undeterred by the multiple new targets.
One copy dove into a nearby storefront, which was quickly obliterated. The glass and tile were sent flying outward in a series of brutal explosions.
Another tried to hide behind the overturned tank's far side, but another screaming skull blast found its mark and obliterated the vehicle.
Another had leapt onto a fire escape, the length of which was immediately saturated with blasts of purple soul energy. The building's wall quickly gave way under the barrage, crushing the copy on the way down and burying two others.
When the firing finally stopped, the entire cityscape before the Last Rider had been shredded. Small impact craters marked where each of his dozens of blasts had found their marks; vehicles were obliterated, buildings were left in shambles, and the bits of the intact sections of the street were now laced with potholes.
Looking on, the Rider searched with human-like eyes for a sign of life beyond the smoke and soot.
Instead, he heard a cumulative grunt from what sounded like another half a dozen copies of Pain. An SUV erupted from the smoke, hurtling through the air in defiance of the laws of physics.
Standing his ground, the Last Rider admired the resourcefulness of the Light Admin. They were wise to send him; he would delay him, undoubtedly.
In the moments that the massive vehicle hurtled towards him, the Last Rider entertained a brief notion. It was all too clear that this trickster of a warrior had been sent to delay him, to buy time until Cucatoth's whereabouts could be determined. The people of Forumscant were mortal fools, and the Rider knew they feared his dominion and the destruction of the city more than anything else. But neither of which were his actual goals.
No. He knew that the time had come, and that he must face Cucatoth soon. It was the only way. The only way to ascend.
Knowing this, the Last Rider saw no reason to rush this battle. At any point the Phenom was able to soar into the sky and obliterate the entire district of the city in which they stood, certain to destroy his opponent. But this young mortal and his noble cause, along with his bravery and cleverness, made the Rider eager to see where the battle would take them.
When the SUV finally came on its downward arch toward the Dark Intruder, he waited. It wasn't until the last possible moment that the Phenom reacted, purely for dramatic purpose. Charging energies into both his fists, the Rider literally tore the SUV in half in midair. In an explosion of violet light he threw a monstrous double ax handle smash, destroying the vehicle as though it were paper. The pieces soared off to either side of him, smoldering and molten.
He continued to look toward the smoky destruction that he had wrought along the street up ahead. He expected Pain to come barreling out for another attack run, or perhaps another flying vehicle to be flung his way, but neither such thing happened.
Instead, the cold bite of a massively weighted metal sword dug into the Dark Warrior's shoulder and neck, sending viscous black blood flying in a brutal spray. It was the blade of the Admin's massive metallic blade, a weapon that had seemed so impractical and decorative that the Rider had not even paid it heed earlier.
More than half a foot into his neck, the sword reached deep enough that it had splintered into the Last Rider's shoulderblade. Grunting from the effort, Pain removed the massive sword and swung it the other way, bringing it low. A spinning slash later and the other side of the blade had found its mark, digging deep into the Rider's unprotected midsection through his leather duster. Without bone to stop it, the massive sword's weight and Pain's strength had sent it deep into the Rider's left side. Black blood poured from the wounds and ran the length of the Rider's duster, pooling at his feet like an oily black mass.
The pain of these blows was undeniable even for the Last Rider, but his grunts of exertion were not the howls of terror Pain had hoped to illicit from his opponent. Still, he'd struck an undeniably effective blow; the black blood coating his blade and pouring from the Phenom's wounds was evidence enough of that fact.
The two stood for a moment, a length of time indeterminate to them both. It was then that the Last Rider reacted in a way that quickly melted Pain's steely determination.
Throwing back his length black hair, the Rider revealed eyes rolled deep into the back of his head. Then, in a shocking move, he grimaced a scowl of fury and grabbed hold of the massive blade.
With a mighty heave, he swung, flinging Pain helplessly into the car door of a civilian truck. Smashing through the passenger side and ramming out the driver's side, Pain fell to the ground in a heap.
This one did not turn into a silhouette and vanished. The Phenom had found the true warrior whom he was engaging this time.
Struggling to even look up, Pain saw the Rider tear the mighty sword from his side, letting what was easily a gallon of that horrid black sludge fall from the injury.
The huge sword landed near Pain's crumpled form with a clang on the asphalt's remnants.
For a moment, Pain had hope. The Last Rider looked to be mortally wounded; black blood pouring from his frame in buckets, burnt scars from the ban saber lining his body and clothes, one jagged char mark running up his face.
Then the bell tolled.
A burst of thick black smoke and the Rider had suddenly changed his appearance. Gone was the duster, as were any signs of serious injury. He was now laced in steel and rubber, the powerful parts of a motorcycle intertwined along his body as armor. Pain could see spaulders made of steel with spikes jutting out of them on the Phenom's shoulders. Motorcycle spokes formed in the shape of a rib cage around the Rider's form-fitting black clothes. At every joint, knuckle knee or elbow, a spiked metallic adornment lay.
The menacing form appeared to be almost wholly unaffected by the injuries Pain had inflicted, though the char mark on his face remained in a less severe form.
The Admin held hope that the Dark Warrior, if able to be wounded, could be defeated. But slowly, the injury began to repair itself. Around the warriors, the skies filled with the spectral remnants of those who died in the battle beforehand. Intently, the spirits looked on, eager to give themselves unto the Hero of the Dead's cause.
Pain slowly began to get to his feet. He could not quit now.
"Leave now," the Dead Man's growling voice intoned, "or be destroyed."
No, he couldn't quit now. No matter the cost.
.