Chapter 394: The Black Panther
Skurge looked down at the spot where the guardian had dissolved.
The violence hadn't left his eyes. If anything, it had intensified into something resembling disappointment. The panther had barely given him a satisfying fight before coming apart.
He was already turning toward the temple entrance, considering what destruction might be arranged inside, when the sound reached him from above.
Not close. Far away, arriving in measured intervals. It came through the rock above them, muffled by forty meters of earth and stone, emerging in the underground chamber as something that resembled distant thunder rolling across an open plain.
Skurge's expression changed. He tipped his head back and looked at the ceiling.
Dust was coming down through the rock -- fine, loosened by vibration, drifting.
"Ah!"
The Enchantress screamed.
Skurge spun. She was kneeling on the ground several feet back from Venom Robin, retreating from him across the stone floor, her face completely wrong -- the composed, unruffled certainty she wore like armor was gone entirely, replaced by something raw and open that he had never seen on her face before.
He crossed the space between them immediately.
"Amora! Did he hurt you? Are you hurt?"
His hand found her arm.
She shook it off with revulsion.
"Don't touch me."
Skurge pulled his hand back. He stood over her, helpless, watching her breathe.
The Enchantress sat on the cold stone floor, her green top rising and falling rapidly, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere past Venom Robin. Skurge didn't look at her. He found the small creature she was staring at instead and put his eyes on it.
After several seconds, the Enchantress drew a controlled breath. Her voice came back, smoothed down, careful.
"My apologies, Skurge." She raised one hand and pointed at Robin. "Kill him."
"Not --"
The Enchantress's gaze found him before the second word could form.
"Skurge." Her tone shifted to something softer. "I was going to reward you after you finished."
Skurge's expression moved through several things simultaneously. He looked at Robin, who was still standing exactly where he had been -- blank, tongue hanging, motionless. He looked back at Amora.
She knew what this look meant. In any other circumstances, Skurge would have done whatever she wanted without a second hesitation, simply because she had asked. That was the arrangement they had. She asked, he acted, and she rewarded his devotion accordingly.
He hesitated for longer than he ever had.
Then he refused.
"Amora." He pointed upward. "Listen."
She lifted her chin.
The thunder came again. Heavier this time, closer -- the Villain mech's weight driving into the earth above them, translated through forty meters of rock into a sustained vibration that filled the underground space. Less like distant thunder now. More like the kind that arrives immediately before lightning.
The Enchantress was on her feet.
She didn't finish a sentence. Her body dissolved into shadow and she was gone.
Skurge stared at the empty space where she had been.
"Amora?"
He looked around the chamber. No trace of her remained.
The thunder continued to build. Skurge gripped his axe.
She had left him here. She had left rather than taking him with her. Which meant she intended him to complete what she had asked before the sound arrived.
He made his decision. He pulled his axe to maximum height and drove himself upward off the stone floor.
The blade came down toward Venom Robin's head.
Five meters. Four. Robin hadn't moved -- still standing, tongue out, apparently absent from the entire situation.
Skurge's eyes narrowed.
A figure launched itself from the temple entrance.
There was no buildup -- no running start, no telegraphed motion. The figure simply emerged at speed and covered the distance in a unit of time that didn't accommodate any reasonable response. It saw Robin's situation and committed to the intercept without hesitation.
T'Challa had emerged from the ancestral temple as the Black Panther.
What he was now bore only the structural outline of what he had been before. He moved on all fours, low to the ground, and at that speed the human classification ceased to apply -- he was a shape, a purple-black trajectory, barely distinct from shadow.
The axe blade buried itself into the stone.
T'Challa hit the ground holding Venom Robin and kept rolling, distributing the force across a long slide that covered dozens of meters before a low stone outcropping brought them to a stop.
Skurge pulled the axe free from the rock. He held it in one hand for a moment, testing the weight. His eyes moved from the embedded crater to the two figures rising from the ground at the far end of the chamber.
His expression didn't produce anything like irritation.
What it produced was enthusiasm.
His cheeks pushed upward with something that wasn't quite a smile -- too predatory, too wide, the look of someone who has received a better gift than expected.
"One's worth killing. Two's just as easy." His voice carried the professional warmth of someone who genuinely enjoyed his work. "Finish both of you and I'll have a proper report for Amora."
He came forward. His back foot drove down into the stone and the rock took his weight and bent slightly under it, the stone edge crumbling into an improvised ramp. He launched off it. The axe came around in a full arc and the air it displaced became a visible wave, shockwave-visible, moving ahead of the blade directly toward T'Challa and Robin.
"Robin!" T'Challa had already committed to the next roll. "Wake up! We need to move!"
He couldn't identify Skurge. He didn't need to. The killing intent was legible from any distance, and the shockwave behind the axe blow told him everything about the force involved. He was not going to survive a direct hit from this person. Robin, still in whatever state Amora had left him in, wasn't going to survive one either.
Two-on-one was the only path. Robin had to wake up.
T'Challa's hand came up, palm open, aimed at Robin's shoulder.
The palm wind reached Robin first.
Robin's hand shot up and closed around T'Challa's wrist.
"Robin." T'Challa exhaled. "You're back. Get ready to fight."
Robin blinked. He processed T'Challa's grip, reversed it by a straightforward rotation, and sent the Black Panther sailing across the chamber to land several dozen meters away. Then he turned to look at Skurge.
He didn't know exactly what had happened. He didn't especially need to.
"Come on then," Robin said.
In New York, Robin had spent months being careful. Batman was faster and more experienced than he was, and always told him to hold back against humans. The Hulk was completely off limits. Everyone else he had to engage gently enough not to kill them by accident.
This was neither of those situations.
He reached to the center of his chest and removed the crescent shuriken from his wrapping-cloth suit, gripping the flat of the blade with the tip pointing outward.
"Robin!" T'Challa's voice cracked through the chamber from thirty meters back. "Do not use that!"
Robin considered this for about half a second, found the argument reasonable, and considered the alternative.
He looked at the double-bladed axe coming toward him. He looked at his own hands. The black symbiote material and white wrapping-cloth extending from his body reached toward each other, and between them, a weapon assembled itself -- white grip, black blades, a double-bladed greataxe that matched Skurge's in dimension and exceeded it in mass.
The weapons met.
The impact produced a sound that had no reasonable business existing indoors. A metallic collision of enormous forces, and behind it a visible shockwave expanding outward from the point of contact in a perfect ring, spreading across the floor and walls and ceiling of the underground chamber.
The two figures separated.
"T'Challa!" Robin shouted across the space. "Execute the plan!"
Black Panther T'Challa had just landed. He watched Robin and Skurge come apart in opposite directions after the collision. He heard Robin's voice.
He ran the options quickly.
His instinct was to stay. Robin was here, the enemy was here, everything in his training said allies did not leave allies. But that last exchange had been conclusive -- Robin could meet this person with something approaching genuine parity. T'Challa staying didn't change the fight's outcome, it only added a second, less capable body to the target list.
Robin was buying time.
T'Challa turned and ran.
He had a broadcast room to reach, a city above him to address, and a king to challenge.
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