It feels so familiar, slipping into a tailored glove or a well-worn shoe. The five of them, the Academy, baring their teeth and wearing their numbers as they call to each other, as they speak, as they fight, as they breathe the training that Hargreeves has given him.
There's a horde of them. More of them than they could take individually. Maybe more of them than all of them could take together. Three and Six are in the water, and Two is covered with gore. Four, again he calls, and One's hands are on his shoulders, and it all comes together. The blue flickers, bright flames burning into fire around his hands, glowing like the most ethereal ectoplasm. And he speaks, the words coming to him from deep within.
It is an old ritual. One he has learned since he was very small. One he seldom used because it never seemed to work.
"You are done here." His voice wavers, but the strength he borrows- from One, from Two, from Three and Six- reverberates back into his voice. "We thank you for your presence, spirits. We dismiss you. Go- and release from the mortal coil-!"
It wavers. The bodies stilling. The lights in their eyes, haunted, hollow, staring at him. And one by one, they fall. Dominoes tipping over, their deadly playthings to be discarded back into the water after they fall. Rot and bones and nothing else as a wave of blue sweeps over each of them.
He's trembling. Shaking. Can barely hold the power inside of him, the flames on his fingertips practically burning. And by the time the last one falls, he's all but collapsed back against Luther.
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There's a horde of them. More of them than they could take individually. Maybe more of them than all of them could take together. Three and Six are in the water, and Two is covered with gore. Four, again he calls, and One's hands are on his shoulders, and it all comes together. The blue flickers, bright flames burning into fire around his hands, glowing like the most ethereal ectoplasm. And he speaks, the words coming to him from deep within.
It is an old ritual. One he has learned since he was very small. One he seldom used because it never seemed to work.
"You are done here." His voice wavers, but the strength he borrows- from One, from Two, from Three and Six- reverberates back into his voice.
"We thank you for your presence, spirits. We dismiss you. Go- and release from the mortal coil-!"
It wavers. The bodies stilling. The lights in their eyes, haunted, hollow, staring at him.
And one by one, they fall. Dominoes tipping over, their deadly playthings to be discarded back into the water after they fall. Rot and bones and nothing else as a wave of blue sweeps over each of them.
He's trembling. Shaking. Can barely hold the power inside of him, the flames on his fingertips practically burning. And by the time the last one falls, he's all but collapsed back against Luther.
Extinguished.