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Tommy wasn't quite sure how the world came to be so dim. Dark spots dotted his vision and unbearable heat in his side, trying to be stopped by his hands. It was raining, but he could hear voices -- once again dim as if they weren't quite there -- screaming and calling out.
Who were they calling out for? Some sort of hero to save them?
Blaring sirens and more cries, he tried to blink away the dots in his vision. Something told him to get up, something said he needed to.
He tightened his grip on his side with one hand and started using the other to push himself up. At the shift of his body, he immediately felt light-headed. Blood loss was eating away at him, trying to coax him into sleep. Granted he was tired, but he just couldn't go down. Not yet.
His blurred vision let the world spin around him, and his ears began to clear up as well. The once muted voices were coming back, and in honest he didn't know what half of them meant. They seemed to get louder though, as he rose from the hard ground. Almost like cheers.
“You got this, Saturn!”
“He’s up!”
“Someone get him an ambulance!”
“Our hero!”
Never mind them, he looked down at his side, and found his own blood staining the blue bodysuit he’s been wearing. That couldn’t be good. His own hands were covered in the sticky red and light prints littered once-unmarked spots of the suit.
He tried to remember what he’d been doing, tried to remember his name even, but no such luck.
His eyes caught on figures in front of him, one assumably passed out cold on the floor with blood pooling around him, while the other was curled into a ball. Their knees were pulled to their chest and soft cries could be heard. The two looked familiar, but he couldn’t exactly place where from. Unfortunately, he couldn’t focus on that for long.
Another sharp pain went through his side as his hand accidentally loosened and he hissed, falling to the ground once more.
The person, once crying, finally looked up at him -- and yeah, he looked really familiar. A teen with glowing green eyes and pale skin, his face was littered in scars and was bleeding from the head, the red sliding down his face and almost caressing his cheek. The teen was trembling, and it was only then that Tommy noticed how the teen shielded his face from the crowd -- the noise.
“Saturn.. What have you done?” His voice was shaky, he wasn’t scared, but his voice was saddened.
He was confused, to say the least. Was..Saturn him? “What?” He said, dumbly.
“You saved the world, and sacrificed yourself.”
His vision flashed with ideas of walking around a city, seeing civilians from the rooftops, and two warm smiles as he turned in for the night. The vigilante, beloved by the people. Saturn. A teen, all too grown for his age, who had the power of exchange. Just a kid, who would do anything to watch the world become a better place.
“I won’t let you hurt them, Punz!” Saturn screamed, lunging forward in front of a near-collapsing restaurant. His teammates, Pluto and Uranus were trying their hardest to evacuate citizens -- they didn't exactly have powers like his that could work on offense nor did they have near-any fighting capabilities -- and he was left alone with the big guys.
Punz, a particular hero turned villain who was dead set on burning the city, raised his brow at Saturn. “Yeah? And what are you gonna do about it? You’re what, barely fifteen? Don’t make me laugh, Saturn.”
The vigilante fumed at Punz’s words. It was appalling how not a single hero was on the scene, he tapped his communicator to check in about that. “Nep, where are we with the hero committee? Didn’t you say Rev and Blade would be here by now?”
The small device in his ear crackled, Neptune’s voice coming out of it. The other vigilante sounded almost scared. “Revolutionary’s said he’d been on his way, with Blade and Corvid. They should be there by now.”
“Well, they're not. Could you look for them?”
A sigh from Neptune “Yeah, I got it.”
A memory of how Punz lunged at him, how he blocked each punch and jab. He remembered a panicked voice over the com saying Neptune couldn't find the top three heroes. But he couldn't really focus on that in the moment, Punz was on his tail.
Then, it all happened so fast.
“Tommy watch out!” Pluto yelled, clearly startled as he yelled the vigilante’s real name. Saturn turned, and was immediately met with the all too close eyes of another villain, as something plunged into his side.
The world stopped in a purple-ish tint. He stood still, the villain, who he’d identified as XD, was in a frozen position in front of him -- and Saturn almost choked.
Quite literally, time stopped, and he knew the person behind it.
His eyes darted to Pluto, Ranboo, one of his best friends. He watched as the other held his eyes shut tightly, hands clenched around the fabrics of space-time. Tommy wanted to be thankful, he wanted to casually step back and thank Ranboo for the use of his gift, but he couldn't help but stare.
A tear slid down his cheek., and Ranboo looked up at him. “I’m so sorry.”
Ranboo’s gift was of space-time itself. He could travel back in time, or to the future -- not like a split-second decision but more of a trip-type ordeal -- but there was another thing. Ranboo could stop time, if he so chose to.
Unfortunately, in the years he's known Saturn, Tommy, their gifts reflected each other. Ranboo had to pay a sort of price -- or someone else would pay it for him. someone would die at his hand. It was supposed to be him, but with Tommy’s equivalent exchange gift, they could force it on to anyone.
It just made Tommy sick to his stomach. The whole point of this fight against XD and Punz was so no other innocents had to die.
In a minute, Tommy stepped back from the knife and ran to Ranboo. He looked at his friend, words leaving his mouth before he could think.
“I'm not letting anyone else die. I’m sorry.”
He had a plan. With his gift, sacrifice would be able to fill in for so much. He’d read books on the gods’ equivalent exchange and that always had more power. It could repay the gods for what Ranboo had just done, and it could wipe out any threat. It could get rid of XD and Punz in a blink of an eye.
All he had to do was die, and that was a lot less work than fighting them, right?
The purple hue of the world was replaced with a black one, covering the area as if storm clouds applied out of nowhere. He made a prayer to the god, Saturn -- he after who the vigilante named himself after -- as well as the god, Mars, and asked for their aid.
And when a whisper of, ‘what will you give in exchange?’ entered his ears, he sent up a prayer to Pluto and Devoto, the god of space-time and the god of self sacrifice.
The world once again faded, and he fell.
Tommy didn't understand.
If his memory served him, he was supposed to be dead. That-- that was the plan. What the hell happened? Granted, he was probably still dying given the gash in his side, but it wasn't because of his prayers.
“Why--” Tommy began to question aloud, but he was cut off by a woman's voice.
He turned to see a woman in a long black draped dress and lace shoulder cloak. Her hair was as dark as the night, but her eyes sparkled like the stars of the sky. He didn't exactly notice in the moment, but the crowd once watching him had gone silent.
The woman stopped about a meter in front of him. It was funny, in an odd way. He could almost immediately pinpoint her features -- though the idea was surreal -- she looked exactly like Death.
Death, as in the universal Goddess. Her painting was in every church and temple, no matter the religion. Statues of her were many, everyone knew what she looked like.
“Tommy.” She spoke, her voice almost reverberating. It sounded ghostly and echoey as if she wasn't there and was nearly his imagination. But, given the rest lion of the crowd, she was real. “You have done nothing but good for the world.”
The night sky above them seemed to slow, and he didn't exactly notice how his side started to lose its pain.
“The gods have seen your actions, and we all agree that you're special. But, we’ve known that. We, gods, have known of you for millennia. We knew this would happen, so we gave you a gift that would prevent your own self-sacrifice.”
Tommy’s eyes widened, “But, I don’t want anyone else to die--how am I going to prevent that--?”
“Tommy.” She cut him off. “No one else will die before their time. However, that includes you.” She stepped closer, one foot at a time before she could rest a hand on his shoulder. “Tommy, you have a good heart. With your willingness to sacrifice your own self for the well-being of the once damned world, Tommy, I grant you divinity .”
His jaw dropped. The whole crowd could hear her last sentence. She kept on, the world listening to her words.
“ As I am the goddess of death, goddess of all that is know, I grant you the divinity of life. You will be henceforth known as Thomas, Goddess of Life, as you have single handedly saved humanity. ”
She smiled warmly, bowing down at the new god. “Thank you, Tommy.”