Louder

The only limit to Michael’s power was how much Rikka’s body could handle and how hard reality would push back if he pushed too hard. The daily strength training for her career gave Rikka a strong and toned body; Michael knew he would win.

Nero tore the sword out of the stage floor and screamed. He was an animal, focused only on the hunt. His hair came undone, and it whipped around him, adding an erratic look. Fire whipped around him in a cyclone as it grew and expanded, circling the stage.

It trapped Rikka, Dion, and Nero together, no escape . They would have no choice but to face his wrath. Fire spewed forth from Nero’s mouth as he let out another scream. The sprinkler system went off, but strangely the water had no effect on these flames, refusing to go out until the pact had been fulfilled.

“Give him to me," yelled Nero. “Give him to me!”

Michael ignored his words. He raised his fist high up in the air and brought it down.

“Crush."

Nero felt like he was being hit by a car, all the air escaping out of his lungs. The sudden weight pushed him hard and forced him to his knees. Michael brought his hand down again, and the weight increased. Nero fell through the stage floor, and onto the padding underneath.

His entire world was spinning, bones aching, head pulsing.

Nero slowly sat up, but couldn’t find his sword. He began to panic. Without it he was nothing.

“This wasn’t how it was supposed to go ,” he screamed.

He was supposed to charge onto the stage, grab the man, and teleport away. His hired investigator never mentioned anything about Rikka’s powers, because, on paper, she simply could find lost things.

Fumbling through the dark he finally found his sword.

Why are you so weak , asked Unas. Why do you not think before you attack?

Nero hated that the sword was right. He needed to think before he acted. Charging chest out wasn’t going to win him this fight, so he sat for a few minutes and thought of a plan. After some time he thought of one, but like all of his plans, he came up with, it was focused on brute strength and force.

He sighed, preparing for the pain.

“ Life is filled with pain anyway, at least this is temporary,” he mumbled to himself.

On top of the stage, the fire cyclone stopped. Dion couldn’t tell who had won and didn’t know how they would leave with everyone blocking the exit. Security personnel rushed onto the stage to take Rikka and Dion to safety while people were evacuating the stadium in droves.

Crushed bodies littered the stadium as people were mashed into a pulp as a stampede for the exits occurred. Escape pods burst out, many of them never reaching their destination, exploding in midair, many parts of the stadium still on fire. People were climbing over each other, punching, screaming, desperate to escape the floating metal death trap.

Michael’s feet felt warm.

He looked down, a red hue coming from underneath the stage, and Michael stood, brave in the face of any danger, underestimating his enemy. Everyone else on the stage ran when a large blast of fire came from below, and skyrocketing up was Nero, riding the wave of the flames upwards, using his sword like a surfboard.

Michael took a step backward, but Nero grabbed him by the foot and with the strength of ten men, he swung Michael into the stands. Nero shocked himself at the sheer strength he had, wondering where he had got it from, and so far he didn’t think the sword had any disadvantages.

More screams echoed in the stadium as Michael’s body flung across, in an arc, and Nero let out a roar of victory, setting more of the stadium ablaze, most of the stage gone except for the landing strip. People cried, choking on the fumes of broken, melting plastic from the arena, slipping on the crushed carcasses of friends and strangers.

He slowly opened his eyes, his head was pounding, and the world felt unsteady. A pile of folded metal and broken plastic chairs were there to catch his fall, and Rikka’s arm was bent oddly, a piece of broken metal was sticking out of the left arm as well.

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Do you want to stop, asked Michael. Can you keep going, my dear?

Yes, replied Rikka. I am not letting him hurt Dion and my precious fans.

As you wish, said Michael. Don’t change your mind when it gets too bad.

Michael pulled the arm up and out of the metal bar. Tears welled in his eyes because he wasn’t able to protect his granddaughter; he had become too lax, too proud. If he was more careful her arm wouldn’t be broken. A large gaping hole was in the left arm, the tendons barely keeping the lower half of the arm connected.

Michael stood amongst the wreckage of metal and chairs. He took a deep breath and turned his palms outwards.

“FLY."

Michael took flight, towards what was left of the crumbling stage. There was only so much he could do with this body, now brutally damaged. If it was still his, he would have finished this with the first word. Yet some too many bystanders would hear his voice, too many casualties if they would hear his one-hit KO. He had to make it back in time before Dion was killed.

The security guards never stood a chance on what little was left on the stage.

Nero stuck his palm out in their general direction and fire came forth. He listened to the screams, and stood, stone-faced, burning them alive.

Dion couldn’t move, his feet planted firmly on the ground, surrounded by fear, the smell of cooking flesh and flames. The same men he was talking to an hour ago were now dead, lying at his feet, chunks of burnt skin cracking off, their steaming muscle and bone left open.

I am hungry, said Unas. Feed me.

Nero was warming up to this mode of eating more than the regular way. No forks or spoons, no calories, no scales, no allure of the porcelain throne after he was nervous that he’d eaten too much, which was every time he ate, so he usually avoided the ordeal entirely or ate very little.

He walked up to one of the corpses, still rigid and standing, crispy like bacon, and struck his sword straight through it. He could feel even more power surging through his body when the rusty sword began to gleam a deep, dark red.

Blood shot up through the sides of the sword filling in the indents and ridges, breathing more life into the sword. Nero felt as if he was stronger than ever before, the man’s blood making his senses sharper, body stronger, and he shivered all over, warmth spreading all over him.

Slowly, Nero pulled the sword upwards, and it cut through the man’s body, the inside of his body sizzling and cooking from the heat given off by the sword. Blood spilled over his hands and onto the stage, but Nero was unperturbed. It was not the first time he was covered head to toe in the blood of someone else. He continued until he pulled it out, through his head, or what was left of it.

Standing in the same pose, the predator's black eyes turned to look at Dion.

Dion could feel his gaze, not just of one man, but two, and when Nero ran towards him, he screamed, because he saw a second man, twice his size, laughing, on fire, and screaming about meat.

Michael landed with a heavy crash onto the stage. He ran, but he couldn’t run at full speed with a broken arm. Dread set in as he knew he wouldn’t make it. Dion would die.

Dion’s self-preservation skills set in after seeing a man get grilled from the inside out, and he ran faster, sobbing, desperate. He ran towards Michael because he didn’t know where else to go. Nero stopped running because he started thinking, not running straight into the fire, he was the fire.

Cold and calculating, he braced himself for more pain.

The air began to crackle again. Pain shot up his arm, somehow, even more, intense than yesterday. Nero cried and tears fell, but he couldn’t give in to the pain.

A portal opened up right in front of Dion, and he ran straight into it.

Michael suddenly stopped, knowing he had lost. Suddenly, everything began to go dark. He realized that this body had lost a lot of blood, with a large gaping wound in the left arm, and fell to the ground.

Nero closed his eyes.

He screamed.

In a flash of light, he was gone.

Michael screamed, he screamed and cried as Sky Stadium collapsed around him and uttered one last word.

“Survive.”

Nothing was free.

Something had to be sacrificed.

Michael knew that the arm was going to die anyway the moment he looked at it. Rikka told him it wasn’t his fault, that it was the red-haired man’s, that this should have never happened.

With every word, he spoke a little piece of Michael Slater died inside.

Now with every word he spoke little pieces of Rikka died as well.