"Michael, I seek you. I mean you no harm."
Michael stared at the beast without the slightest change in expression. The indifference on his face was more unsettling than anger. A moment ago, he had been the seemingly pleasant nineteen-year-old conversing with Quatre and Troi, even entertaining their grievances against Elizabeth. Now, that version of him had vanished. His expression darkened, and the atmosphere around him changed so abruptly that it felt as though a killer had silently taken the place of the young man they had been speaking to. Vincent barely reacted. He knew Michael well enough to recognise the switch. The twins, however, were caught off guard. They had seen Michael injured, calculating, and strangely accommodating, but this was something else entirely. The two-headed beast took another step forward, its enormous paws pressing into the scorched earth.
"So you are the human the Ancient spoke of." The beast lowered its two heads, studying Michael with an intensity that made the surrounding silence feel oppressive. "Very well. Before I waste any more of my time, I must test whether you are worthy of the name. Human, step back while I test your friend."
Vincent's eyes widened. "Test him? Please, don't test him!"
VROOOOOOM!
The energy surrounding the crater began to move. It streamed through the air towards the beast, spiralling into its two enormous mouths as though the entire Wasteland had suddenly become a river flowing towards a pair of bottomless drains. A colossal cyclone formed around its heads, one side radiating blinding white while the other churned with impenetrable black. The two opposing energies twisted against each other, grinding together with such violence that the air itself seemed to vibrate. White and black. Two forces that should never have coexisted, now compressed between the beast's jaws into a single, terrifying mass.
"Survive this, Michael, and you will confirm my theory." The beast's voices overlapped, one deep and rumbling, the other carrying a sharper, more guttural resonance. "I do not know you. But I need you to be the Michael I am searching for. Otherwise, my kindred may fall into the hands of the Ancient."
Before Vincent could say another word, the beast unleashed its attack.
A colossal beam erupted from its mouths, a torrent of white and black energy that tore through the crater with the force of a natural disaster. The opposing energies twisted around one another, devouring everything caught between them. The ground ruptured. Rocks disintegrated. The air flashed white, then black, as the beam surged forward with seemingly no end in sight.
Michael did not remain idle.
Quatre and Troi immediately moved in front of him, their bodies beginning to glow as they prepared to combine their power and confront the incoming attack. But before either brother could act, Michael stepped forward and seized them both, forcing them apart with sheer physical strength.
"STEP BACK!"
The twins stumbled away, their expressions frozen in disbelief. For a moment, neither could comprehend what had happened. Michael had separated them as though they weighed nothing. They had been prepared to fight beside him, perhaps even save his life, yet he had pushed them aside without hesitation. The realisation slowly settled in. This human had been standing among them, allowing them to speak, feeding them energy, and playing the part of an injured man who needed their help. He could have killed them at any point.
And they had never even realised it.
Michael planted his feet deep into the ground. His eyes followed the approaching beam, measuring its speed, its direction, and the destructive force packed inside it. He could not withstand a direct hit. Not even with his abnormal regeneration. The attack was too immense, its energy too concentrated, and its heat far beyond anything his body could endure indefinitely.
I can't take the hit. I have to flow with it.
Energy surged through his legs.
Pump. Pump. Pump.
The veins beneath his skin bulged as his muscles tightened. Red light spread across his body, coating him in a violent glow. The two cores embedded in his shoulders began to burn brighter, their radiance bleeding through his flesh as though miniature suns had ignited beneath his skin.
Michael raised his hands, brought them behind his neck, and launched himself forward.
His body spun.
Once. Twice. Faster.
He rotated through the air, twisting his torso and limbs into a continuous spiral as he accelerated towards the oncoming beam. Heat erupted from his body in waves, turning the surrounding air into a turbulent haze. Energy spread across his skin, forming a barrier that merged with the steam pouring from his overheated body.
He was not trying to stop the attack.
He was trying to redirect it.
"IF I CAN'T TAKE IT, I'LL REDIRECT IT!"
The beam collided with him.
For an instant, the entire crater seemed to disappear beneath a flood of white and black light. The force threatened to tear Michael apart, but his spinning body refused to meet it head-on. His rotation, the turbulent steam, and the energy coating his skin disrupted the attack's direct impact, forcing its destructive flow to slide around him instead of striking him squarely.
It was like a sheet of water breaking around a spinning blade.
But the difference between redirecting the attack and surviving it was terrifyingly small.
The heat began to consume him.
His heat-resistant flesh blackened and peeled away. Patches of skin vanished at the microscopic level, disintegrating as the beam's energy tore through his body. His regeneration struggled to keep pace with the destruction. Every fraction of his body that healed was met by another fraction being burned away, leaving him trapped in a relentless cycle of annihilation and reconstruction.
Yet Michael kept spinning.
His hands twisted around his body, his muscles strained against the pressure, and his two cores blazed brighter. Steam poured from him in such quantities that his silhouette became difficult to distinguish inside the attack.
Vincent watched in horror as the beam continued to pour from the beast's mouths.
It was not a single blast. It was an endless torrent.
Michael was standing inside a catastrophe that showed no sign of stopping, redirecting an attack that could have erased him with a direct hit. Sweat drenched his body despite the scorching heat. Every second demanded more energy, more control, and more pain than the last.
Quatre and Troi could only stare.
What in the world is that beast?
Their gazes shifted between the colossal creature and the human spinning within its attack.
And what the hell is it? A cub?
The beast's enormous frame was already intimidating, yet Vincent had called it a cub. The twins could not help wondering what its adult form would look like. If this was merely a young specimen, what kind of monstrosity did the Wasteland consider fully grown?
Michael, however, seemed utterly unconcerned with the implications.
Beast. God. Bola.
His thoughts drifted towards the beings standing between him and the answers he wanted.
I'll devour every last one of you if that's what it takes to achieve my goals.
The red light beneath his skin intensified.
And my goal is to kill all of you.
"MAXIMUM OUTPUT!"
Both cores in his shoulders flared, their radiance becoming so intense that they resembled two miniature suns burning through his flesh. Michael forced more energy through his arms and fired concentrated beams from his hands, directing them along his spinning trajectory. The additional thrust accelerated his rotation, allowing him to maintain control against the torrent bearing down on him.
Slowly, impossibly, the attack began to change direction.
The beam that had been tearing through the crater began to curve upwards. Its white and black currents twisted away from Michael, bending towards the sky as his rotation forced the destructive stream off its original path.
The deflection was gradual. Painfully gradual.
Every inch of redirected energy demanded another burst of power from Michael. The ground beneath him shattered, and the surrounding air roared as the displaced beam carved a widening path through the atmosphere. The sheer force of the attack threatened to drag him along with it, but Michael continued to spin, driving his body forward while maintaining the angle of deflection.
For anyone watching, the spectacle was almost impossible to comprehend. It looked as though a black hole had appeared at the centre of the crater, warping the world around it as an immense torrent of energy bent towards the heavens.
But Michael was no black hole.
He was a human being forcing his body to perform something it had no right to survive.
And he was doing it anyway.
The entire exchange lasted barely thirty seconds.
To Vincent, Quatre, Troi, and the two-headed beast, however, those thirty seconds seemed to stretch into an hour. They watched a human body endure a force that should have reduced it to nothing, watched his skin burn away and regenerate, and watched an attack capable of devastating the crater slowly lose its hold over him.
At last, the beam's trajectory shifted far enough to pass harmlessly above Michael.
The beast immediately closed both mouths.
The torrent ceased.
Silence crashed over the crater.
Michael's body remained suspended for a moment amid the fading currents of energy. Then his feet touched the ground. Steam erupted from his skin, swallowing him in a dense white cloud that obscured everything except the faint red glow of his cores.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then a figure emerged from the steam.
Michael walked forward.
His skin had been pulverised and atomised in places, yet the damage was already healing. Flesh reconstructed itself across his arms and shoulders. The torn tissue closed. His body restored itself with a horrifying indifference, as though the attack had been little more than an inconvenience.
He advanced towards the beast with the unhurried stride of a king returning from the conquest of a thousand kingdoms.
Behind him, the landscape had been transformed.
The crater, already forty kilometres across, now bore the scars of the redirected attack. Molten rock had carved a vast, cross-shaped pattern through the devastated earth, its glowing lines stretching across the crater like the mark of some colossal crucifix driven into the ground. Rivers of magma illuminated the destruction, painting the ruined landscape in the colours of a dying sun.
Michael did not look back.
He stopped before the towering beast and raised his eyes to meet its two heads.
"So, Beast and Vincent." His voice was calm, almost conversational, but there was nothing remotely reassuring about it. "Explain yourselves."
His gaze moved from one face to the other.
"Unless you'd prefer me to erase you from this Wasteland, too."
Michael glanced towards the devastated crater behind him.
"After all, I just erased your little circus act."