Nitro vs Sytherion
By PandaKnight

"Ah, the infamous Doctor Nitro. I'd have known it was you."

"Only...?" I responded in a mock-prompting voice.

"Only?" my nemesis asked, confused. I sighed.

"You'd have known it was me, only... what? What prevented you from knowing it was me?"

"It's a figure of speech, Nitro. Do we have to go through this every time I use an idiom?" I glanced down at the ground before altering the flow of energy through my body and spinning to face him; he floated freely, while I was more suspended by the purple energies that marked my power.

"We most certainly. Precision of language is important, Sytherion," I chided. "How can you properly taunt or engage an archvillain if you can't say the very words you mean?"

"Correcting people in public isn't polite," he shot back.

"We're hundreds of feet in the air. Who's going to hear us?" I retorted. He grunted.

Sytherion was everything I could ask for in a heroic rival - intelligent, sophistocated, strong at long and close ranges, creative, willing to be civil when I was, and easily distracted from the minions I had loading crates of gold and silver bullion into my vans hundreds of feet below us. In other words, he was high-class enough for my to gain respect by beating him, but even if I lost to him, he'd ignored whatever theft I had in progress in the meantime.

He was, in short, every villain's dream nemesis, but few villains could even dream of standing up to him. At close range, his super strength was nearly unmatched; at a distance, he was a precise and powerful blaster. He could soak up ludicrous amounts of damage - even the Entropic Bolts Captain Chaos used - without even blinking. He was widely accepted as the world's strongest hero, in fact.

That was fine with me. I was the world's strongest villain.

"So, going to do this the easy way or the hard way?" Syterion asked, cracking his knuckes. Him asking and me rejecting his offer had become a ritual for us, almost.

"Let's go the easy way." I held my hands out in front of me. Routine exists to be broken, after all.

As he approached me uncertainly, a deafening roar accompanied a bright purple flash as I blew him back with a dead-center energy burst.

It was no less than a villain was obligated to do, of course, but his irritation at having been tricked meant my lieutenant, Shadowshot, could get the guys on the ground out of there without Sytherion going after them. Knowing Shadowshot, she'd probably throw a fit of me sticking my neck out to cover them, but it would be fine.

Sytherion rocketed at me, a fist hitting my solar plexus armor - and the purple glowing indicated my shield's presence - faster than I could dodge. I flew backwards and he pursued. I gasped for air through my breath mask, taking in deep breaths of raw oxygen as I stabilized my flight. His fist came at my mask this time; I dodged left and brought my left boot around at his face, trailing purple glow.

He dodged under it and I spun, the metal heel coming down hard on his head. He cried out in frustration as he turned to face me.

"You'll pay for that," he yelled over the winds. I adjusted my goggles.

"Will I now?" I taunted, my voice a little tinny from the alteration of my tone by my breath mask, as I straightened my coat (which stopped at my hip on the left but came to my right) a little.

"Let's see you breathe without that mask, Nitro!" he yelled, his hand on the metallic mask before I could stop him.

"You fool, if you remove the - you idiot! Don't..." He braced his other hand against my metallic chestplate and ripped it from my face.

I held my breath, grabbed my mask, and shoved off of him. I inspected it - ruined by his touch, he'd crushed the nitrogen filter.

See, my name is Dr. Nitro because every part of my entire body absorbs Nitrogen, the most abundant element in the atmosphere, and converts it into my power - whether I like it or not. That's why normally, my costume exposes a little of my face, my scalp and hair, two fingers on my right hand, and the fingers on my left hand.

"Damn it," I gasped out finally.

When I inhaled, everything turned purple. The nitrogen entered my lungs and was consumed, creating a vacum within me. I inhaled fifteen seconds straight, then yelled the name of my nemesis, who was staring at me, fear behind his mask. Wings of purple energy, fifty feet wide each, trailed behind me. Still, even with that power sink I was numbed by the sheer power I controlled.

No, not controlled - merely held. I wasn't controlling it any more.

I swung my arm at Sytherion. A purple energy arm swung with me, the hand the size of an SUV, slamming straight into him, slamming him against a wall of power I created to his side. The nitrogen was saturating my whole being, turning my into one enormous dynamo of power. The ecstacy I felt at having such potency wrestled with a fear, a fear deep within me at what I was and what I could do with such power, a buried terror of my deepest, darkest desires.

A huge purple hand held Sytherion in place, crushing him, squeezing the breath from him, striking fear into his heart.

"You brought this upon yourself," I declared to him, my voice entirely unlike it had been, altered by the way the air flowed when it was a nitrogen-burning machine. "Now, your punishment!" I rushed at him and began to strike him, punches and kicks and knees and elbows and headbutts - it didn't matter. I was impervious and he was at the mercy of my might and it was his fault. When I was done, I glanced down. My subordinates were ready to leave and the police had a barricade. I spun Sytherion so he could see, then floated above him.

We came down on the barricade like a meteor, shattering the pavement. Our sonic boom stunned the officers, and before they could react, they were all restrained as Sytherion was, disembodied purple hands denying them freedom. I lifted all of my vans over the cracked pavement to the streets, nodding at Shadowshot as she started at me from the back of one van with her enormous rifle beside her. I waved at her and she smiled, then nodded and waved back. My vans began to drive away, loaded to the brim with stolen precious metals.

I turned to Sytherion, raised him up, and grabbed his jaw.

"Now, where were we?"