Spoiler (Click to Show)
The roars of the mountains ripping themselves from the planet. The ground cracking and separating into riffs of unseeable darkness. The collapse of buildings in only seconds, piling on top of each other as nothing more than rubble. Children screaming and families holding on to each other for dear life, hoping these moments wouldn't be their last. It was as if God himself had struck the Earth.
And yet he held the burden. The knowledge that those lives were lost because of human curiosity. Because they wanted to know. Because of this damned energy. It's unknown strength unmeasurable, housing itself within his body. It was a parasite. Leeching on him only so that it can cause more destruction. Why even continue living?
These haunted thoughts always raced through his mind, and yet here he still was. Why? What was he searching for? What purpose had he given himself to keep living?
The water cascading into the reef below fed these ideas. A hidden cove where none would think to traverse. Only to view and wonder. The humid smell fogged the trench, coating the dark blue-ish rocks walling and nearly roofing the area. The cove was dug into the Earth, unseeable from a distance and surrounded by forest digging into the underground.
His feet hung over the ledge, careless of the distance to the lake below. He had hidden himself away in a place none would think to stumble. He sat behind the waterfall, cliffside invisible. It was desolate, quiet, peaceful. He was completely alone in his own thoughts, shunned from the rest of the world. He was now in his his own place, away from everything.
Everything.
Everything.
"Hey."
Sacred's eyes shot open, caught off-guard from the unsuspecting voice. He looked over to see a man standing there, eyeing him.
Sacred at first made sure this was no hallucination, staring the man down.
"What're you doing here?" he immediately questioned.
"I should be asking you the same thing. You're obviously not sightseeing," the man replied in a snarky manner.
"How do you know?"
"Intuition."
Sacred couldn't come up with an appropriate response.
"So tell me if I'm mistaken," the man started, "But were you the guy that I just saw flying across the sky?"
Earlier Sacred had been riding atop a hovering rock, his signature style, over a forest. He had been escaping the city limits in fear of the entire town coming down on him. After all he had just finished battling the detective, who warned that more would come.
"No."
"I dunno. I mean I did see him come in here, and you are the only person here."
The light sarcasm in his voice did no good for the situation.
"Listen, I don't know what you want from me. But if you're looking for a fight, you've come to the wrong guy."
The man raised his eyebrows.
"What makes you think that I came looking for a fight?"
"Why else approach someone like me?"
"Intuition," he replied cockily once again.
Who did this guy think he was? It's obvious he's aware of Sacred's capabilities, or at least one of them. So why did he not even seem the slightest bit nervous? If anything he acted as if he was meant to be there.
It's possible that this guy was one of the people Ashe was mentioning. One of those that are trying to hunt him down. It doesn't make sense though. Why are people looking for him? What purpose do they have? Ashe might be after him because of Everglade, but what do these others he mentioned have to do with any of it?
"What's your name?" the man spoke.
Sacred didn't reply.
"Well, I'm Nhaleet," he responded to the silence.
He rested on his back foot while crossing his arms, "And if you think you're special just because you can fly, you've got a lot to learn, buddy."
Sacred sighed, "Why are you here?"
"Why are you?" Nhaleet returned not budging from his original reply.
Sacred just about had enough of these characters trying to get themselves involved with his life. He had no intention of causing anymore destruction, yet these people kept egging him on as if he owes them a challenge.
"Look. If you'd know what's best, you would leave now," the stress in Sacred's voiced was emphasized.
"Is that supposed to be some sort of threat?" Nhaleet seemed excited.
"It can be if you want it to."
In only mere seconds, this exchange of words had turned into a grip of the throat. Both were now enemies instead of strangers.
Nhaleet smirked, "Good."
Sacred immediately jumped up, and with his foot now raised in the air, swung a rock ripped from the cliffside towards Nhaleet.
As quick as a fox, Nhaleet twisted his body out of the rock's path and carried his momentum forward towards his new enemy.
Sacred landed on the ground and stretched out both of his arms, flinging torn pieces of the Earth from behind him towards Nhaleet, who was able to snake his way between all of the debris.
When both were only a few feet a way from each other, Sacred drew a fist back and threw it forward. Before he made contact, however, Nhaleet had already made a motion with his hand and grasped Sacred's wrist, carrying it upward and cleanly missing Nhaleet's body. The opening left a strike from Nhaleet's knee into Sacred's gut, and then an elbow to the temple.
As Sacred fell back from the blows, a correlation of water swarmed from the nearby waterfall, hosing onto Nhaleet and pushing him back against the rock wall. When he opened his eyes, he saw Sacred with his arm stretched. Almost immediately, he ducked and rolled forward, avoiding a race of stone pillars firing out from the wall.
As he sprinted forward, the wall began closing down on his footsteps, slowly catching up to him. However, as soon as he was within range of Sacred, he slid on the ground, catching Sacred by the knees, and standing making him fall forward.
Sacred caught his fall with both hands and flipped himself back onto his feet. He began to throw strikes at Nhaleet, who parried and dodged every blow regardless of the extra leverage Sacred would constantly form through every punch.
He was fast. Almost too fast. As if he was aware of every move Sacred was about to make.
Nhaleet came in for a blow to Sacred's jaw, but an expanding ball of concentrated oxygen separated the two apart, pushing them both meters away from each other.
Sacred stretched his arm behind him. Within his open palm, their was a sight of the ground from below him ripping from the floor and collecting into a harpoon. He gripped it with strength and flung it forward towards Nhaleet.
Nhaleet's eyes were widened, yet he was still able to jump his way forward and under the harpoon's path. However, a string attached to its backside was pulled stiff by Sacred, tripping Nhaleet and also bringing back the harpoon. Sacred had thrown himself into the air, harpoon in hand, and struck down at Nhaleet.
Too quick to catch, Nhaleet was already out of the way and on his feet, shouldering Sacred into the wall.
"You're too easy to read, pal."
Nhaleet seemed to have comfort in his voice while saying this. Did he have the upper hand?
Sacred lifted his hand towards the confident's chest, crystalizing his fingers with a blade at the end. He stabbed it into Nhaleet's side, who yanked himself from Sacred, throwing him to the ground.
Sacred rolled and picked himself up, stretching his arm out and creating a crystal coating reaching past his elbow nearly to his shoulder, reminiscent of when he was fighting JJ. Only this time he pointed at the clinching Nhaleet, and began launching shards as if it were a cannon.
Even with the high velocity these shards traveled in, Nhaleet was able to avoid them while wounded as if he were in slow motion. He was even able to catch one before it was able to course through his head, turning in order to halt it.
With a hand still on his wounded side, Nhaleet flipped the shard and lunged it at Sacred. However, it dissipated in thin air before it reached him.
"Huh," Nhaleet spoke, "I guess I could be wrong."
Sacred swung his crystalized arm, sparking away the hardened coat that encased it, and ran for the cliffside.
Nhaleet watched in confusion as Sacred jumped from the ledge and hopped onto a forming rock below him.
"Oh no you don't," Nhaleet realized Sacred making an escape or advantage.
Nhaleet sprinted for the ledge as well and watched Sacred closely as he began to elevate and turn in the air. The chaser sprung himself from the cliff right through the bellowing waterfall.
Sacred, not being able to see through it, did not expect to find Nhaleet springing from the other side. He landed right where Sacred was, now standing on the rock as well.
Sacred balanced himself and tried kicking him away, but Nhaleet turned and gripped Sacred's calf, pushing him backwards. As Sacred fell off the rock, he put his hand below him and landed on a newly outstretched piece of the rock, and pushed himself back on his feet.
"Or I could be right," Nhaleet teased.
Sacred found no humor in this as the rock was still elevating higher from the waters below. He gave a look of not just anger, but destructive intent.
"You want unpredictability?" he muttered.
Sacred raised his arm above him. The pulsating veins beneath his arm began to glow brightly. The sound of the Earth around them colliding grew. A shadow loomed over Nhaleet, causing him to look upwards. The small entrance from the sky to the ravine began to close up mightily. The size of the rock formations being created were too massive to fathom moving.
Sacred closed his palm to seal the roof entirely. Darkness befell the both of them as the water from above stopped flowing down.
The extended rock beneath Sacred lifted behind him and hugged his body, encasing it for a moment and then propelling itself forward into Nhaleet. The force not only knocked him off his feet, but flung him from the rock more horizontally then with gravity.
Expecting to find himself now falling, Nhaleet's backside was met with a cold hard surface vertical to the ground. The cracks he heard he could not tell was either his bones or the surface he landed on. All the same, the pain was undeniably relentless.
Sacred jumped from out of his cocoon, shattering it as he lunged a far distance from the rock, shooting through the unoccupied space of the newly made cavern. He landed with both feet on either side of Nhaleet's body with an impact to the surface too strong for the thinly cold surface to handle. Yet it still managed to hold.
Sacred's veins were the brightest lights in the entire cavern. One gripped Nhaleet by the shirt collar and lifted him away from the wall, his body now too damaged to resist.
Nhaleet's eyes looked down, "Heh, freezing the waterfall. Even I couldn't have predicted that."
Sacred ignored the useless taunt, his face full of rage and lit up by his glowing veins.
"What do you want from me?" he asked with no remorse in his voice.
Nhaleet only looked back at Sacred.
"ANSWER ME!" his voice echoed in the large cave.
Sacred's hand gripped Nhaleet's collar tighter as his body hung limp over the blackness below. The distance must've been at least a few hundred feet. He was sure to die from the drop.
"I liked the challenge," Nhaleet chuckled.
The rage grew in Sacred's eyes. He wouldn't believe the simple reasoning, "You and all your friends need to understand something. I'm not some prey you can just hunt down for your little wRHG system. I'm more than that. I'm a god damn human who lives with a pain none of you are capable of bearing. This is NOT a game! Do. You. Understand?!"
Nahleet could only stare and breath. The pause was long and undisputed. Sacred could only wait for an answer.
Finally, Nahleet was able to mutter a few words.
"What the hell is wRHG?"
Sacred's eyes widened, as he let out a gasp. The thoughts came to fruition. Sacred lowered his head and closed his eyes.
Nahleet looked at Sacred with confusion. None of this made any sense to him. He could only see the top of Sacred's head. But soon his ears picked up the sound of Sacred's whimpers. The tears dropping from his face barely visible from the limited light.
"I'm sorry," Sacred whispered between the tears.
The ice below Sacred's feet began to bend back towards the cliffside as his arms began to dim. Sacred sat himself back along the cliffside while Nahleet lay next to him battered.
"Why'd you stop?" Nahleet asked.
Sacred wiped his eyes before speaking, "I've been on the run for a while now. And these people from this damn system keep attacking me as if I'm some sort of enemy."
Nahleet couldn't respond.
"And now in all this rage, I've almost killed someone innocent. Like I've done before."
Sacred's voice was crackling under the emotional stress. The pain was becoming obvious.
Nahleet had absolutely no clue what Sacred was speaking of. But it seemed as though there might be something bigger going on than he had anticipated.
The air had once again become calm. And now the cavern was lightless. Only the quibble sounds of water drops from the once existant waterfall filled the ambience. The air was humid, with a cold vibe filling its spaces. The two were now both separated away from the world. Away from everything.
Everything.
"Who are you?"
For the first time since they encountered, Nahleet spoke out of honest care, rather than provocation. [/spoiler]
Spoiler (Click to Show)
The meeting with Frank had gone well, other than the fact it was cut short by soldiers coming from every direction. Nhaleet was still healing those bruises. At least his ankle was feeling better, and could support his full weight. Frank had not been able to tell him much before that happened, only that the nearest city was owned by the lab. It was also Nhaleet’s only chance at getting provisions, and it was to the east. Before he had left he had taken the only thing he could get his hands on, a small pack. Later, while he searched the pack, he found some small bowls, plates, cups, and utensils. All of them were plastic, of course.
Beneath him, a lone traveler meandered past, talking to himself in undertones. It was hard, but Nhaleet could just make out “…he know? How did Ashe know about Everglade? How could he have known I was the one to destroy it?” Nhaleet was shocked; he nearly fell out of the tree. This one man, destroy an entire town? Why would he do that? How dare he kill so many people? It is not up to him to see who lives and dies! He could barely hold in his rage, burning as a pool of oil lit by a match. It flared within seconds, and raged like an inferno inside of him. Nhaleet could actually feel the burning in his gut, and tried to wrestle the feeling into submission. He failed, he could barely think, could barely move, all he knew was that this killer had to die.
After a time, Nhaleet’s rage did burn out, and his mind cleared again. He may have had a reason for destroying a city. Hell, it may have not even been a city! It feels like I know it is, but how would I? It may be an object that needed destroying. I should ask him. Mind set, Nhaleet tracked the man down to a small glade in the forest. He decided to go into a tree to hide. The glade was open, and the first thing Nhaleet noticed is that he smelled food. His stomach