17. One Of Our Own.
Atom backed away from the battle before him, as the three Creepers he had been engaged with began to gyrate, their eyes filling with shadow and as sparks of black power began to burn through their skin. He held his arms out and shepherded the children backwards behind him; Steel, Element Boy, Wildling and Montez all moving together into a group as their combatants too began to convulse. Black Adam strode toward them all, a maniac's smile carved across his face, his body alight with crackling obsidian energy.
“Pathetic, mortal, WASTE!” He exclaimed with much joy, hie every syllable like a mighty clap of thunder, “Did you really think yourselves worthy of standing against ME!?!”
He laughed as the Creepers about him burst into flames, one by one, their essence returned to its true form; black light, which arced across the space between them and returned to the smouldering form of Black Adam. “Puppets, one and all, moulded by the Ventriloquist's clones, powered by my light, the black light of Eclipso which I now channel through me! Which I now reclaim as mine!!!”
And in one mighty conflagration, the remaining Creepers burst into black flame, not one of them making a single sound as the terrible black lightning arced and spat, strained and bent through the air and began to return to Adam's body. “Power... power like the Gods have only dreamt of! All mine! All mine to... to...”
Suddenly, the lightning began to bend a different way; spluttered and twitched away from the body of Adam and across the torn and heaving battlefield to a different hand.
“Montez?” Steel whispered it under his breath as he looked to his friend behind him, his arms raised to the sky; his eyes black as Hades, his body alive with pure power.
“If it's power, I can use it.”He said, his voice strained, but exuberant, “I want what you got, big man.” And with that, Montez tensed his muscles and drew deep from within himself the power he had been bequeathed, the untapped ability he had never had the chance to exert fully before. He felt and endless chasm within him fill, the extent of his powers begin to be touched upon... but then.
“You like the darkness, don't you, boy?” Adam held his ground, the lightning seeming to freeze in mid air; hung between Montez and Adam like a chord, or a noose. “I can feel it, see you inside. We are connected by the light, boy... the black light. And I can see you oh, so clearly. You crave the darkness and the power it brings... don't you.”
Montez was sweating, his every muscle straining as he felt Adam pulling the light back to himself' felt his control slip against insurmountable power.
“D... Don't know what you're talking about, man.” He wheezed, as if trying to lift some impossible weight, “Too... busy.. k... kicking your ass.”
“Don't fight it, boy.” Adam's voice was like stone; certain... unrelenting, “Fighting me is like fighting yourself. You're not like these fools you surround yourself with. You're not like the others... You're one of our own.”
And with that, Adam released a mighty bellow and pulled the lightning back into himself. It took but a second for it to be yanked from every pore of Montez' body, his screams lost on the tide of the electricity casting itself through the air and back into the form of its master, Black Adam.
“Now.” He growled, licking his lips at the ecstasy of the power that again coursed through his veins, “We end this.”
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