The God of Gravity part 3: Apocalypse

Different World

Darius and I are flying in the air and we can see how the masked men flood out of the crater. They chase down these innocent people. These vile people… they're the ones who are responsible for everything that has happened!! I will make them all pay!

“Are you ready, Darius?” I ask.

“Always!!”

I inhale and exhale, my power covers my fist. My target is the group of evil men chasing after innocent people. Darius throws his dagger whereas I, “Fist of Seven: Millenium Punch!” The gravitational wave destroys them and the ground beneath them. 

Just now, they realize we are here. Darius rescues the people with precision and speed. He is everywhere so the masked men can't even touch them. Some of them have the luxury to thank us, some don't. Well, it doesn't matter. This is what we are made for! Their faces are in shock as I descend upon them. They should be! 

“What's with you, kids?!!” screams one of them.

I didn't answer. With a shattering of the ground as I land, I sweep the place, punch by punch. All of them are demigods but the two deities are very far behind. They think it makes them cool but for me, they're nothing but cowards. Darius is already on his way. I better assist him. I finish off the remaining demigods. The rest of them started to retreat. 

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*

At the back of the group of masked men, a goddess and a god are standing on a large crocodile. She is wearing a mask decorated with crocodile teeth. The god is wearing a wooden mask.

The goddess notices Darius running towards them. “Oh, look at that,” she says.  “a desperate child looking for revenge. We have seen these a couple of times before, haven't we?”

“Yes,” the god answers. “and it sickens me.”

Darius jumps up. The god aims at him with his bow. Darius throws his dagger at him. Right after he dodges, he released the arrow. The arrow explodes at a bursting speed like a cannon. He is utterly confused when Darius disappears. 

Behind him, he hears, “Fist of Two!” Darius punches him in the back. His spine breaks and gets blasted away into the ground, instantly making a coffin for him.

The goddess attacks him with a sweep of her crocodile tail. He jumps up to dodge but gets a punch in the face. Right as when he gets hit, he uses cessation. Darius stops at the distance. His gas mask is broken so he removes it and his face is unscathed. The goddess is already in her half-crocodile form but gradually reverts into her humanoid form because of his power.

“What?” she asks herself. “There's no way… Enzo is not here on Earth yet!” She looks at Darius. “It couldn't be… that this kid knows it too since he can teleport as Enzo does!” She shakes her head. “Nevermind! I'll finish him off!” She calls her relic.

*

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Here it goes. She's calling her relic. It seems that she does not notice me yet. My concealment is no joke, alright. I explode repelling force beneath my feet, boosting me downwards just in time to intercept her relic. It looks like a spear full of scales and crocodile teeth. I intentionally land hard on the head of her crocodile to hurt it. At the same time, I got a hold of her relic. I punch her, she takes the blow with her SB but to no use. She does not know she can't use it against me. 

My 5th DT punch added with repelling force, lands on her abdomen. She goes flying off of the crocodile and into the ground with an explosion. I let her watch as I use her relic and turns into a half crocodile. I feel the power surging through me. I can see my long snout and feel my long tail. The skin of my hands is replaced by gray scales. I command her crocodile to attack her. It follows what I think.

“Stop!” she commands it. “I'm your goddess!” She tries to dodge but I hold out my palm facing her. She floats towards me and the crocodile's mouth. “Why can't I use my Immunity?!!” she panics. 

“The answer is you can't,” I say.

I jump off of the crocodile's head. I have close my eyes to avoid seeing her getting crushed by the large crocodile's teeth. That's when I accept I'm a murderer now. Like a large door slamming shut, the jaws snap into a close. Her bones shatter, her blood splatter, and her scream comes to cease. It's the most horrifying sound I have ever heard. 

I open my eyes. I see my b****y hand holding the spear. These are the hands of the murderer. I had no choice. I want to protect everyone. I look up and see Darius descending from the air and punches the crocodile's head, killing it instantly. The ground shatters beneath it, making a dustcloud. He goes out with the b****y mask of the goddess in his hand and approaches me. The other masked men retreat to where they came from after seeing their deities defeated.

I'm breathing hard. I think this isn't because of the exhaustion dealt by the fight. It was an easy fight for us. So… is it really this easy to kill someone? I swallow because of that thought. I don't want to be a murderer, yet I have become one. I should be ashamed of myself. I'm don't deserve to be the King now… The King of Olympus is a good man and I–

“Hey!” says Darius to my face. I'm startled. He's been in front of me this whole time? He squeezes my shoulder with his hand and says, “Snap out of whatever you're thinking, man!”

“Oh… uh… right.” He's so calm about killing someone. As expected of him. He's a tough guy. In mind and body. “We had no choice but to kill them, right?” I ask while guilt is running down my lungs.

He looks at me with a face of confusion. “Of course! What choice do we have? They are here to kill our people and both of us. Of course, we have to kill them!” he shouts at my face.

“Yes, but should we have… I don't know, captured them instead?”

“We ain't got no time for that, Leo. They'll be a burden.”

He's right. I shouldn't feel guilty. This is a different world now and a different circumstance. We are in the right but why am I still feeling this way? I'm confused… so confused. “Alright,” I nod. “Let's guide those scattered people to the safe place.” He nods while wearing the b****y mask and we left to find them.

It didn't take us quite a while because we can sense where they are. They are suspicious of us because Darius wears a mask of the enemy. He has no choice because the masks of the masked men are like gas masks that filter the toxic elements. Even so, we didn't fail to convince them. They know us because of the demigod tournament and the buzz it made when we are allowed into Olympus. 

We are in the ruined shelter in the middle of a dry field. I'm doing my best to calm the boy who lost his parents. He is tucked in a corner.  “It's okay,” I tell him. “we are friends of Olympus, here to help you.”

He is facing his back at us as he whimpers. “Get away from me!!” he screams. “Mom, Dad, help!!” 

“Let me force manliness into him, Leo,” says Darius, cracking his knuckles. “He has to learn the hard way.”

“No, don't,” I stop him and he glares at me. I sigh but eventually, he shakes off. I kneel beside the boy and pull out a chocolate bar from my small backpack. “Are you hungry?” I ask him.  Slowly I'm making a lot of noise while I open the wrappers of the chocolate to let him know it's real food. “Let me give this to you. I saved this for you. Maybe it's the last chocolate bar in the world but I don't know. If it is, then it's yours.” His whimper gets weaker. “Come on,” I say in a gentle tone.

He turns around to see it. I can tell that his eyes widen a little bit when he saw it. He grabs it slowly by the wrapper and takes a bite. The whole roofless room echoes with the crunch of the wafers of the chocolate in his mouth. He cries harder and I don't know why. Maybe it reminds him of what he lost. I hold his shoulder from behind. It reminds me of my family. I want to go and find them to check if they're okay but I'm ordered not to… just yet. I also wished that they are among the people we saved.

So that's that for finding the scattered people. We gather them and guide them to the shelter we made near the crater of Olympus. There are over sixty people with us. I lead the way, using my SF to protect them all from radiation. We've been walking for hours. Darius is at the end of the group, covering us from behind if something happens. So far, no sort of trouble has happened. But that's about to end when one of them collapses on the ground. It is an old man, we gather around him and luckily, there is a human nurse among us. She is the first to tend to him.

After inspecting him, she tells me, “He inhaled too many toxic ashes. We might be able to save him if we walk a little faster to get help as soon as possible.”

I look around, and all I see are tired people. I can't say for sure if they can do it because Darius and I are feeling a bit tired too. Plus, I feel it's night time and we have to rest but that means slowing us down. I get to decide now? It's hard. I have to keep in mind everyone. We will run to similar problems if I don't let them rest. He will die if we don't move fast. Which is it?

Swallowing, I decided so I say, “I will-”

“I'll take him,” says Darius.

“Wait, that will not work, Darius. You still have to protect him from radiation. I'm the only one who can do that and that also means I can't leave these people.”

“We can't let him die,” he asserts.

“Yes but-”

“I think it will be fine as long as he gets there fast,” says the nurse. 

“It's risky,” I counter.

“No, it's a chance that he might survive.”

She's right. I have no choice but to listen to her. She's an adult so I guess she knows more than I do. I nod before saying, “Be careful, Darius.”

He picks up the old man and made him ride on his back. “I'll be back,” he says and sets off. He can only run because he can't bring other people when teleporting. Even so, he is fast. He disappears behind a hill in no time.

Meanwhile, we found a place to stay. As everything that has been left standing, it is a ruined building. I hand out rations that are barely able to pacify their hunger. We did our best to gather food and water. It was so hard and we had no luck in finding a lot. Some of them complained about it. I'm stoic about it since everyone is frustrated about everything as I am. 

After we rested enough, we continue our marching. Darius returns with his face crumpling like a fabric. “He died,” he says to me.

I close my eyes in regret and guilt. There's no reason for me to take the blame. Even taking the blame will not bring him back. “Let's just go,” I sigh.

We arrive after a day of traveling. Lady Mila wearing a gas mask and protective suit is there waiting for us before the entrance of the recently built bunker. Her eyes through the glass of the mask look like she's glad to see us arrive safely. And with a lot of survivors with us. She embraces us both and I can tell she cares about us.

“Masked men were slaying innocent people,” I whisper in her ear. “I killed them. I'm a murderer.”

“You're not,” she whispers back. “You saved innocent people and… uh… I'm so glad that both of you are safe.”

I couldn't think of a word to say so I didn't say anything. Her embrace is something rare. As far as I know, she will never give it to us, even for a slightest chance. I miss my family's embrace. I begin to wonder if I'm starting to forget how it feels to be hugged by them. I want to feel it again. I let her go and I walk with the people we rescued. We enter the bunker. Darius puts his arm over my shoulder as we walk and people are cheering for our “success.” I don't call this a success—not at all. The suffering is still there.

-

*

Mila looks at Leo's back as he walks to the entrance. He is slouching in sadness and she feels bad somehow because she cannot do anything to make him feel better. He even did her a favor when she asked him to go and rescue people. She puts her hand on her chest. She feels warm after that embrace.

“I'm glad he's here,” she says to herself. 

Happening in the far south, Oso and Gwen arrive on Earth, witnessing its atmosphere all covered with ashes. They are deities so they ejected out of their ship while in space and landed on the desert of Ra. It is nothing but a land of ashes and snow. 

“What the heck happened here?!” he exclaims, pulling his hair.

Gwen looks around with a disappointed face “This is not what you told me, Oso!” she rages.

He looks around and sees the craters and the ruined city on the horizon. “This is not what I signed up for!” he growls. “They told me nothing about destroying Earth!” They start to wear masks.

Someone grunts behind them. They turn around and find it is a man under the shade of a wing of an aircraft. He only has a metal arm left attached to him. He is talking in his sleep, “Lady… Sayuri…”

*

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