Template:Featured Articles/14-2021

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MoA Daytripper.png
Moment of Awesome - Amanda Sefton/Daytripper: In Roma's false world, the Black Knight of Selene's Hellfire Club fights to the death with her former best friend, Adam Destine.


Amanda turned away from Jubilee's corpse, her satisfaction somehow hollow. It had been more difficult than it should have been, killing the cripple, and she had let the woman's motor mouth get to her. The fury which had fuelled her earlier had eased and now she could feel the burns on her body from the drones, feel the crackle of burned skin and flesh and hair at the side of her face. The ear Remy had injured previously was effectively gone now, a stub of charred meat. Sloppy work. Far too sloppy. But still the urge for destruction was there, to burn the world around her even if she burned herself, the bloodlust which would not be sated until the one who had betrayed her was dead.

"This cost you everything, didn't it? And now, surrounded by ashes, you can't even bloody see what the point of victory was."

That voice. That familiar voice. She spun around to face Adam, energy crackling around her fists. "Still spouting off the holier-than-thou shite," she spat, the fury rising again. "You never stop, do you?"

"No, I don't. Because I believe in something." Adam floated down from the air, his hands ringed in concentric circles of white light. "And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Mandy, because you could have. If- if too many things had been different."

Amanda laughed, high and hysterical. "You're sorry?!" she echoed. "It's too fucking late for sorries. You had your chance and you LEFT ME THERE!!" There was no need to cut herself - she was already bleeding in several places - and the Staff of One came as she intoned the incantation. Its weight was heavy and reassuring in her hands. "You and me. As it should be."

"No, it shouldn't. It should have been us against this madness. Instead... you became no different than Rack." He drew a pair of complex figures in the air in front of him, a white hot shield coming into form in front of him. "You stole power instead of earning it. You took from others instead of learning. That staff is just a sign of your weakness."

At the mention of Rack, Amanda's eyes turned black, empty as pits. "Weak? I'm not the one who's weak. And this Staff is going to be the thing that kills you," she retorted, thrusting the Staff's end in Adam's direction. A bolt of black energy erupted from it, slamming against his shield.

As the energy washed over the shield, Adam waved to the right, and redirected it. The wave of power twisted, spiraled, and smashed directly back into Amanda.

Amanda intercepted it with the Staff, which swallowed the energy into itself. Another gesture with it and the ground surged upwards towards Adam, floorboards twisting and warping into giant hands set to crush him.

Adam whipped his hands around in rapid circles. As each of the hands drove towards him, he disappeared into the teleporting portals he'd opened on either side of himself.

And of Amanda.

The staff snapped like a twig as both hands smashed into the English woman, tossing her back like a rag to skip off the floor.

"I won't fall to the magic you took from others, Mandy. Not against what I've learned."

Amanda raised herself up on her hands and needs, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the floor. The look she shot him was full of hate, bordering on madness. "You think you're so fucking clever," she snarled as she climbed to her feet, obviously unsteady. The spell with the floor had been intended to crush him and the redirection had hurt her. "Golden boy, one with all the chances. Always bloody interfering. You and that fucking Cajun. He’s the reason she left." Her hands wove intricate patterns, ones Adam had seen before - it was one of Rack's spells. "Fine, let's go back to basics."

Fire erupted from the ground, surrounding Adam. Flames rose above his head, threatening to engulf him.

He whispered a few words, rotating his hands around his body. The flames licked against the white energy shield for a moment. As they intensified, climbing the pillar of energy, they began to change, dispersing above his head in a flock of red coloured butterflies.

"No, you don't get to be the victim, Mandy. You had chances to get out. Chances to change. But it was easier to let Selene give you power instead of having to learn it. It was easier to hurt others and tell yourself the pain and agony that you caused them was their fault because you were the one who hurt first." Adam twisted and a torrent of the same white energy, the likes Amanda had never seen poured from his hands, stripping away her shields like cobwebs in the face of a storm.

"You had chances to escape. To be different. To learn and earn your power instead of taking it from others. But it was too damn hard for you, so you went back to being the victim and going the easy way." Adam said. "That ends. Now."