The Black Knight

Chapter 7

Apocalypse rose to a stature beyond the buildings of the town around him, his roots smashing through them left and right as he expanded.
"Now, where is that evil woman?!" He shouted, smashing a house with his fist. Suddenly, his head was knocked aside a bit as Cassian punched him in the cheek. "Her little pest is here?!" He snagged Cassian on his way back down and stared down at him. "You defeated me once before, but that was when we were the same size, Chosen One." He hurled Cassian at the ground, creating a crater in the stone street. Cassian rose to his knee and looked back up at Apocalypse.
"It doesn't matter how big you get!" He shouted. "All I have to do is fight you until they arrive!" And with that, he launched himself back into the fight.
Denzel shoved rubble off of himself and shook the dust from his helmet. He looked down to see TNT was under a piece beside him. He helped TNT with the debris and helped him to his feet.
"I need you to do something for me." Denzel said.
"You crazy?!" TNT shouted. "Take me to jail, I ain't stickin around here."
"I need you to distract that thing until I get Cassian back to his senses." Denzel replied, completely ignoring TNT.
"Absolutely not!" TNT shouted.
"Come on, it'll be fun." Denzel said with a smirk. "Just for a few minutes. I'll give you a head start after the fight."
"Oh, I'm gonna regret this, I just know it." TNT said, crossing his arms. "How do you propose I even fight that thing?"
"That's for you to figure out." Denzel said, taking off.
"Thanks for nothin, bird brain." TNT said as he started sprinting toward Apocalypse. "I'm gonna need a long vacation after this. Somewhere tropical."

Cassian clung to one of the holes in Apocalypse's cheek and repetitively punched him in the jaw as hard as he could. But just before Apocalypse grabbed him, Cassian was snatched from the face of the giant figure by a flaming blur. Denzel held him tightly and slammed them both into the ground.
"Now, you're gonna listen to me, and you're gonna listen good!" Denzel shouted.

Aaron closed his eyes and began to focus. "I'm gonna try and hear you instead of see." He said. Slowly, the vision in front of him disappeared, and he began to hear, muffled as it was, Denzel's surroundings, including Cassian.

"You don't have to listen to her!" Denzel shouted. "I don't even know who she is, but you don't have to!"
"I have to fight that thing!" Cassian shouted, much angrier than he had been before. "It's who I am!" His voice now began to waver a bit. "It's all I am." He said.

"That's not true!" Aaron shouted.

"You're more than that!" Denzel continued. "You're funny, kind, heroic. And you're our friend. We haven't had a lot of those. But I'd call you our closest."
Cassian stopped struggling quite so hard. "We are not friends!" He shouted. "You are in the way of me fulfilling my destiny!"

TNT hurled a finger at Apocalypse, an explosion going off along one of his roots. Apocalypse looked down at him.
"And who are you, little mortal?" He asked.
"Name's TNT!" TNT responded. "And I'm gonna fight you for a minute." His speech became drastically less confident as that sentence went along.
"Is that so?" Apocalypse asked with a chuckle. "Because I don't think so." He raised a root up above TNT and began to bring it down as he began to laugh. TNT gritted his teeth and raised his arms as the large tentacle of dead plant matter quickly fell toward him. But the impact never came. He opened his eyes to see he was standing next to a man in a suit, with a beard and a purple cape. Cyfrin held up his hands, an invisible barrier holding the root back.
"You may want to move out of the way." Cyfrin said as he struggled to hold the massive limb. TNT nodded and raced out of the way. Once he was clear, Cyfrin leapt to the side, clearing himself of the impact before the root struck the street. He summoned his prism and floated into the air.
"You're one of them!" Apocalypse shouted. "I've been waiting for you."
"Yeah, well, I hate to disappoint you, but I'm all that's coming." Cyfrin said sternly. He fired a beam from his prism into Apocalypse's face, causing him to stumble backward a bit.