Death Touch: the ability to kill any form of life just by touching them.

It's like a bomb goes off.

Tiana is thrown away from him and, since space powers don't give a single fuck, he's tossed straight up. He hits the belly of the fox at neck breaking speed and blacks out for a second as gravity brings him back down again, landing on his stomach.

The noise is completely sucked out of the air, replaced with a high pitched whine and the smell of metal and sulfur. His hearing comes back first, his other senses returning as well. Besides regaining his breath, he's unable to move his body.

His whole body is buzzing with a prickly feeling, paralyzing him in place. It feels the way static looks, if that makes senses. He tries to move his head to the side, or even just move a finger, but every inch of him feels like molten rock, unmoving, heavy and sluggish.

Surprisingly, the sun has already begun to set, spilled colors of orange, fuchsia, and purple. He can hear wheezing somewhere to his left. Tiana must've landed nearby. Josh hears footsteps crunch on glass and metal, approaching him slowly with an obvious limp on one of the legs.

Without any strength left in him, he closes his eyes. The person's shadow blocks the sun's light, and they grab his shoulder, flipping him onto his back.

He opens his eyes, seeing Hayley's unfocusing face in front of him. Her hair is a mangled ponytail holding up barely. Cuts and bruises cover her all over, bloody spots covering her suit. She's breathing like she ran a marathon, blood staining her upper lip and under her eyes.

"What happened?" She asks, pulling his torso upright.

Josh manages to open his mouth to speak, but that's about it. Only heavy panting comes out. Now he really can't do anything.

Hayley looks around, picking up the complete stone that sits at his side. The halves are still blue and red, but the seal where they had been broken before now glows a startlingly beautiful purple.

"You did it." She laughs in disbelief, looking it over in her hand. "You fixed it."

He feels his eyes wanting to roll back, but Hayley shakes him, jolting him back to consciousness.

"Where's Alley Cat?"

Josh doesn't respond, but she gets her answer anyways as rebar whizzes past her head, nearly hitting her. She drops the crystal into his lap and ducks out of the way, rolling to the side, and immediately retaliating with a blast of ice.

Slumped but somehow still upright, he witnesses Hayley fighting Alley Cat, though he could barely call it a fight. Both are severely injured. Josh knows the poison from Tyler's scorpion tail must be kicking in, because Hayley's swaying on her feet, arms barely raising above her waist.

Alley Cat doesn't look any better. His face is drenched in blood, and as he attacks, he doesn't even use one of his arms. The blast from the stone must've hit him hard too.

Josh can almost see Tiana from the very corner of his eye, lying on her side, unmoving. She must be in the same state he's in- frozen and half dead.

Hayley hits Alley Cat in the side with her walking stick hard enough for his leg to give out, making him take a knee. He grabs the stick as it comes down on his head, yanking it out of her grip and tossing it away.

"Don't act so high and mighty because you're deemed a hero, Kiyoko," he growls, shuffling back up to his full stance. "You're no better than me. You're a thief too."

She backs up and kicks with her bad leg. Alley Cat grabs it and spins her siguen, sending her spiraling. Somehow, Hayley lands on her feet.

"I can see you were never taught the difference between borrowing and stealing. I don't take forever, you do. You're a monster."

"Look in the mirror. Oh, wait. You can't," Alley Cat taunts.

His good hand starts to spark with white bolts of energy. Josh recognizes that particular ability easily, though he's never seen it used. Death Touch. One touch and the person is dead in less than a minute, if not instantly.

Hayley snarls, unafraid of this obvious shit storm heading her way. Alley Cat takes a step forward and thrusts his hand forward, narrowly missing Hayley, who comes back with a punch to the gut.

"I'll take every power you have first," he laughs, doubled over. "Then I drain your body and put you out of your misery. And once I'm done with that, I'll turn to your two little ducklings and slaughter them."

Alley Cat dodges Hayley's kick, the swing going clean over her head. "But- but I'll make them suffer first. I'll kill the girl first because let's be honest, the boy is the weaker of the two. She's destructive. So I'll make him watch as she bleeds out, then I'll crush his head with my hands."

Josh wants to help. No, he needs to help. But his stupid body seems to have other plans. He glances down as far as his eyes allow, seeing the radiant glow of the now whole crystal.

His power comes directly from the stone. If he can just focus enough and somehow unfreeze himself, then he can help Hayley.

Please, please, let the work, he says in his head.

He closes his eyes again, trying to concentrate on the cool heat in his lap, imagining it filling his body with that same cold energy from before. His toes start to tingle, but not in the same way as before. Josh scrunches his nose, seeing himself in his mind grabbing the stone and standing.

Grab it and stand, he chants quietly. Grab it and stand. Grab it and-

Heat rushes up his hands to his shoulder, like when you move an arm you fell asleep. Josh opens his eyes. Hayley is still dodging Alley Cat's attacks, but her reactions are getting slower each time he swing and she ducks.

As a test, Josh wiggles his toes. They wiggle. He does the same with his fingers, and gets the same results. Cautiously, he attempts to lift up one arm to grab the stone from his lap. His hand, inch by inch, rises and flips down on the stone.

He hears a low creak, and turns his head an inch to the right to see Tiana on the ground, one hand lifted and touching the closest leg of the fox, the last one standing. Her eyes are glowing completely red, no black spots this time, just a crimson light.

Where she touches, the metal, wood and plastic starts to fragment into minuscule pieces. It floats up like ash, the disintegration quickly overtaking this towering figure until there's nothing left but paw-shaped craters and the smell of sulfur in the air.

Alley Cat sees this and grunts, pointing his hand at Tiana and sending a wave of needles and metal piping her way. They turn to dust as soon as they get close to her. Tiana's eyes roll back and her arm goes limp again.

Hayley sees this and is stunned long enough for Alley Cat to turn and grab her throat with his electric-charged hand. Josh forces his mouth to open, uttering one word that booms through the street like spoken through a speaker.

"No!"

Startled, Alley Cat lets go. One of Hayley's own hands ignited with the same miniature lightning bolts and she grabs his face, shoving him to the ground headfirst. She holds him down as he struggles, yelling obscenities and threats before his body finally goes limp. Hayley holds that positing, as if making sure that Alley Cat is fully dead.

Then she stands. "Guess you thought I couldn't use your own peers against you, huh."

Bit by bit, Josh gets both hands on the ground and slowly pushing himself to his knees. He crawls towards Hayley, seeing her stumbling over to Tyler's body. She kneels beside him and presses one hand over Tyler's wound, the other places gently on his forehead.

"Resurrection," he chokes out, the syllables slow and chunky. He doesn't even bother trying to get the rest of the sentence out.

She nods solemnly. "I don't think he'll mind me borrowing that for a bit."

The hole in his chest starts to seal up, threads of skin and muscle slowly closing it, leaving behind a nasty splotchy scar. Tyler gasps softly, the color returning to his cheeks, through his eyes remain closed.

"You can... heal yours- self, right?" Josh asks. "The... poison."

Hayley shakes her head, smiling to herself. "I can't do it myself. You, though, you could heal me with the stone. But... this is it for me. I mean, I've finally killed him. What else is there for me here?"

Josh points a heavy finger to Tiana, then to himself. "Us, you.... have us."

"Oh, honey." She wipes a bloody tear from her face. "I've done a lot of thing I wasn't proud during in my time as a self proclaimed hero. But the worst thing was betraying you two. You'll be fine without me, trust me."

"But- don't wanna."

She lies down beside Tyler, placing a hand on her chest. "You can't stop death, Josh, you just need to learn to live with it. Learn to live without..."

Her words drift off into the stagnant smoky air as her eyes close. They stay that way.