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"I don't think we have to go that much farther anyway. The trees are thinning ahead and I think I can hear--"

The trees opened up and revealed they were standing on a cliff that dropped directly into a raging river below. Not far in the distance, the river poured over the edge of a large waterfall.

"Perfect."

The cliff sloped downward, so there was a way to safely walk down into the edge of the river, but Rich had an idea.

"It was a cyborg. Coluan, I think. When I hit her, it was like punching a steel wall, but that means she's probably pretty heavy -- and she might need to breathe. If I can position her right, and I can rocket into her hard enough, I might be able to knock her into the river. Even if I go in with her, she'll probably sink right to the bottom and I can swim out."

His Nova Force arm was crude but he could still swim with it.

She was still coming after them, the sounds of her running through the underbrush crashing towards them. Rich drew the katana and cupped some Nova Force energy in his hand.

"Sam, start getting down to the bank. Looks like there are vines down there. If I go in, I might need you to toss me something and help pull me out again."

No way was he letting Sam go against her, not after he barely got away alive the first time.

Edited 2016-11-05 06:13 (UTC)

Perfect was not the first word that ran through Sam's head when they were chased into what looked very much like a dead end.

But that was why Rich was the one coming up with the plans here, and while part of Sam bristled at getting shunted off from the fight, there wasn't really any problem with the plan that he could object to - even if Rich sounded remotely in the mood to entertain objections, which he definitely didn't.

"Be careful." Not that careful was a word in the Nova vocabulary, half the time, but...

"Yeah, sure. I'll do something maybe kinda like that."

He flashed a Sam a grin that was half reassurance, half-devil-may-care. He couldn't really promise careful. He could at least promise that however he tried to wing it, hopefully it'd have minimal amounts of dying.

Rich looked back to the crashing sounds coming through the underbrush and then she was there, that fast, running towards him with a speed and pitiless determination that made her cybernetic nature very clear. The fight was brutal. This wasn't the kind of superheroing that Sam was used to seeing on Earth. This was vicious and savage, the fighting of two soldiers that knew only one of them was walking away.

Unfortunately, it was starting to look like that person was possibly not going to be Rich. Without his superstrength, flight, and invulnerability, he was ridiculously outmatched. The metals that Wiress were made of had to be similar to something like adamantium, so even when he successfully blasted the flesh off of her body, or cut it with the katana, he couldn't destroy the metal at her core. And that meant he couldn't entirely destroy the flesh the metal was guarding. Her nanites meant that she regenerated from every wound with a speed that would've made Wolverine or Deadpool envious. Even after Rich successfully blasted all the flesh off of her face, knocking her back towards the edge, by the time she turned to face him again, it had almost grown all the way back, T1000 style.

"Oh, come on, seeing as I don't have a convenient vet of molten lead to drop you into, would you just die already?"

Edited 2016-11-07 04:55 (UTC)

Wiress responded by kicking him hard in the chest, sending him flying into a tree with a painful-sounding thud.

"That's the problem with purely organic life. So soft. It's so easy to batter your tender flesh until the will to live leaves it. I'm not just going to kill, I'm going to make you beg for your own extermination."

She tilted her head to the side, in Sam's direction.

"And then I'll do the same with the human broodling my sensors detect not far from here."

Rich dragged himself to his feet again, clearly hurt, nodding briefly, almost as if agreeing to her argument that humans were weak and fleshy, or as if he was about to capitulate, and then he lunged at her, wrapping his Nova Force tentacle arm around her face and pouring as much burning energy onto her face as he could, trying to burn through to her brain. To help things along, he stabbed her in the eye with the katana, trying to get it in deep.

Using both to twist her around, he was able to get her closer to the edge of the ridge, almooost where he needed her to be to rocket her off into the water.

He let go of the sword and one last kick to her chest got her right up against the edge. He was clearly about to rocket into her when her chest opened up to reveal some kind of energy cannon. The blast seemed mostly just concussive, so fortunately it didn't tear through his flesh wet tissue paper the way it would've if it'd been a pulse cannon, but it did slam him backwards with such force that he slammed into the ground multiple times, rolling end over end, and left a furrow in the ground as he skidded to a stop.

Clearly disoriented, his face and body battered and bloody, he started to move, tried to get back up again. She approached him, pulling the katanna out of her own eye, her flesh already healing. She held the sword up, clearly planning to use it to kill him.

"Now that I've got you down on your knees, this is the part where you beg, meatbag," she hissed.

"You say that...like m'gonna stay here."

It was possible he'd get up in time. Maybe. He was certainly trying. But he was clearly struggling and she was getting closer and closer, the blade raised, her back to the drop behind her--

Maybe he'd get up in time.

Maybe he wouldn't.

Sam wasn't going to take the chance on waiting and finding out. There was no time to think about it, no time to consider the consequences - there was just a single opening that he was going to have exactly one shot at taking.

So he rocketed forward, with every bit of momentum he could get behind his weight, slamming into her midsection.

Rich looked up to see Sam rocketing into her. He saw her go over the edge. Then he saw her grabbing onto Sam's shirt and dragging him over the edge with her as she started to drop towards the water like a stone.

The sudden drop in Rich's gut felt like his stomach had been tied to a boulder and tossed off a cliff too.

"SAM!"

Rich didn't bother with doing something asinine like going over to the edge to look over. No, he finally dragged himself to his feet successfully and started running down the slope, nearly tripping over his own feet, and skidding down the rocks so fast he almost broke his damn neck.

He saw vines already at the shore, still attached to the trees but pulled partly free so they could be used as a lifeline -- Sam had done exactly what he was told. Rich took advantage of it, wrapping the vines around his forearm enough that he could swim without them becoming unwrapped, kicking off his boots, and looking out on the water.

Seeing Sam in the rapids, he ran forward and dove into the water, the currents so fast that he didn't even have to swim that much to get dragged right in his path.

Edited 2016-11-07 06:14 (UTC)

Oh, crap.

Crap, crap, crap.

It felt like the world moved into slow-motion when she grabbed his shirt; Sam knew he couldn't be falling for more than a couple of seconds, but it felt like he had all the time in the world to see the water getting closer...closer...

As they went under, he kicked Wiress in the gut, hard, and whether it was just the shock and force of hitting the water or whether he actually made a difference, she let go, and he was able to thrash his way to the surface -

- and then he was under again, because Sam didn't have nearly the weight or the strength to make any headway against the current. He was at the mercy of the rapids.

As Sam was dunked under again, a strong arm that wasn't an arm wrapped tightly around him, pulling him up high enough for his head to break through the surface. Rich's gravimetric arm clung to Sam with an iron grip.

"Got you! I've got you! Go limp!"

He didn't want Sam trying to thrash around on instinct so that he lost his grip on him.

Instead of fighting his way through the rapids with brute force, something that would've been damn near impossible with one arm, he held onto the vines and tried to rocket Sam and himself back to the shore. Maybe this place had sapped their powers enough that anything more than short bursts of rocket speed was out of the question, but he figured he could manage enough thrust in the water, especially if he just let his taut lifeline bring them in a natural circular arc back to the shore.

The arc took them dangerously close to the falls but Rich still managed it, rocket-scooting like he'd never scooted before. As he dragged Sam onto the shore with him, he saw Wiress clinging to rocks at the end of the falls, but the current eventually dragged her over with an aggravated scream.

There. That'd put a hell of a lot of distance between them.

"Sam. Sam," he gasped out. He pulled Sam upright so the teen could cough out water more easily if he needed to. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

It was a damned good thing Rich had the presence of mind to tell him not to thrash, because that was Sam's instinctual reaction to just about anything, really. He relaxed and tried to catch his breath as Rich steered them back around.

Okay, maybe he'd have a better time catching his breath once he got the water out of the way. It took him a couple minutes to respond, alternating between coughing and taking in deep breaths until he felt like he had himself under control. Mostly.

"'m good. I - did we get her?"

Rich nodded, a hand still held on Sam's shoulder, as if he just wasn't quite ready to let go of him yet.

"Saw her go over the falls." He caught Sam's eyes. "Need more time to catch your breath?"

He had to ask because he wanted to make sure Sam was okay first.

Before the yelling.

Edited 2016-11-07 07:07 (UTC)

"No, I -"

Okay, one more breath.

"I got it."

"Okay, good. Good."

Sam was okay. He was okay. Rich didn't have to worry about that part of things anymore. Wiress hadn't done any damage.

That meant the yelling was going to start, because now that Sam was safe, all the panic and terror and protectiveness ripped its way out of him like water through the breach of a dam.

"Now that I know you're okay, I can do this." He grabbed Sam's other shoulder with his Nova Force arm and lightly shook him, not enough to hurt him, just enough for emphasis. "What the hell were you thinking?!"

He stopped shaking him and his eyes went a little wild, in a way Sam had likely never seen before. Just like a few minutes earlier, when he'd fought like a soldier on a battlefield instead of a superhero, in this moment, he looked like a soldier who just crawled off a battlefield.

"I don't care if someone's about to put my head on a goddamn pike and put on a puppet show with it, when I tell you something's too dicey and to get somewhere safe, you get somewhere safe and you stay there! And if you need to leave, then you leave and find somewhere safer, you don't throw yourself head first into it. Never ever do something that idiotic and reckless again! Do you hear me?! Never!"

It was the first he'd ever raised his voice at him and he was raising it pretty loud.

Edited 2016-11-07 07:21 (UTC)

"What, like she wouldn't have caught up to me in the next two seconds anyway?" Sam snapped. "Earth to Rich, we're on Murderworld. There isn't anywhere safe, if I ran we'd probably both be dead, and the best chance we had was the plan that you came up with!"

Sam wasn't entertaining any delusions about his ability to stay a step ahead of Wiress. She'd effortlessly had Rich's back to the wall, and Rich had about every advantage on Sam that Sam could even think of.

This was rapidly devolving into them just yelling past each other.

"You didn't even give me a chance to get back up again on my own! You jumped the gun, and you could've gotten yourself killed. You should've left it to me, I was the only one that should've taken on the risk --"

It was probably exactly what Arcade wanted. Drama. But this was the first time that Sam had nearly gotten his ass killed trying to protect Rich and he couldn't just let it drop. He couldn't.

"Aren't you the one who's all about setting a good example? I did exactly what you would've done!"

And that was the problem, when it came down to it. They'd finally found the one trick Rich really didn't want to teach Sam.

"That's exactly the problem! I'm the one that's supposed to take that kind of risk on, Sam. Not you! If that ever has to happen, it should happen to me, not you!"

After saying those words, Rich just knelt there, looking him in the eyes, and some of the fight left him, leeching out of his shoulders.

"That's my job. Being that guy is my job." He tapped him on the shoulder. "And that's -- that's the one part of being Nova that you should never try to do. I'm not saying don't protect people or never risk your life, because that's impossible when you're a superhero, but during the times somebody needs to be that guy, that does the absolutely crazy, suicidal thing, that's -- "

He swept a hand down his face.

"That's a Rich Rider thing. Not a Nova thing." His face softened even more. "You're fifteen. You're an amazing hero and you're gonna grow up to be an even more amazing one, but you're fifteen. You deserve to be protected and taken care of. You're a kid. And I don't mean that you can't handle it or anything, I just mean you shouldn't have to."

Kids were supposed to be kept as safe as they could be kept. Sure sometimes Sam would have to risk his life but if it was down to the two of them and one of them had to do something suicidal and brave instead of just brave... well the choice was obvious.

"I lived my life. Maybe not a whole lot longer, but enough."

This was a moment where Rich wasn't aware of how sad it was to think twenty odd years of life were enough. It was a moment where maybe Sam could see the cracks -- that there were at least a few. That there were things Rich could be blind about, and feeling like he was the one that should always automatically be thrown under the bus to save the day was one of them.

"There's too much you haven't gotten to do yet and too much you haven't gotten to be."

As if the same didn't go for him, someone who'd briefly been dead before 30.

Edited 2016-11-07 08:11 (UTC)

There was a long moment of silence, as if Sam was deciding whether to get back into it.

But he didn't - or at least, when he spoke again, he wasn't yelling anymore; his voice dropped down to something very, very quiet and he asked:

"So why's it even have to be a Rich Rider thing?"

Rich was the guy who always got the shaft because - because he thought he had to be?

Screw that.

That question genuinely threw him for a loop. He struggled to find the words, the right way to articulate that it was just because. That's just how it was, that was how these things worked, someone had to be that guy, and he was the best choice, because...

Just because.

But he knew Sam wouldn't accept that answer. He was too stubborn.

"Someone has to be that sometimes. And --" He worked his jaw, trying to find a way to put what he was thinking into words. "It's just better if..."

He covered his eyes with his hand and pushed wet hair out of his face.

"It just is. Someone has to do it sometimes, take that on, and that's what I can give. Sometimes somebody has to be what people need and I'm good at it."

He still hadn't answered the question of why him, of why he had to always been the one that sacrificed, that always made himself into what other people needed.

"I can't explain it, it's just how it's supposed to work."

Edited 2016-11-07 08:33 (UTC)

"How it's supposed to work is that it doesn't have to happen to anybody in the first place."

The fact that that wasn't always the way it worked, sure - reality was a harsh mistress that way. Things never went the way they were supposed to.

But that didn't change the fact that, as far as Sam was concerned, the idea that Rich was supposed to just trampled over for the benefit of everyone else in the galaxy was a load of crap.

"How it's supposed to work doesn't matter. Nothing ever works the way it's supposed to."

Reality was a bitch.

"But when I go into stuff like that, everyone else is too important."

The words slipped out before he really thought about how they would sound, and he tried to recover.

"I mean... you know, I just..." He looked around. "We should get moving."

It wasn't a good enough answer, and for a long moment, Sam didn't say anything. (The way he was looking at Rich probably said plenty.)

But he was right about one thing - they probably shouldn't stick around. If anyone else was around, there was no way that shouting match hadn't attracted more attention than they needed to be dealing with.

"Fine."