It was the first night in a thousand years on the planet of Paradis.
Parades were everywhere. Tourism was up, and the streets were filled with gawking people. Various celebrities held concerts during this week to gloat to their fans and other celebrities about how they were there for the moment of a lifetime.
Police gave up on any kind of enforcement this week. Their main goal was to minimize the number of deaths. Businesses were focused on maximum profits. Good money was to be made at a historic moment. Beach lovers knew that this was the week to make thousands and get some new permanent customers.
Tony was no exception.
Tony was a former pizza parlor with an apostrophe and an s that fell off on the large neon sign. Alto bought it and refurbished it and gifted it to Nero. Alto figured Nero needed a hobby to stay busy. Alto also needed a legal business to clean money from his ‘business trips’.
If it made a profit, that was also a plus. Nero never bothered to replace the sign.
Today was a special night inside Tony.
It was a VIP night, for the top clientele in town. It was situated near the red-light district and it was only 2 miles away from the Apex, Atlaan’s stock exchange building. Nero helped Alto by attracting rich, connected men to frequent the building, get drunk, and boast about their lives.
Alto used the information for various forms of business deals, insider trading, and occasionally blackmail.
But mostly blackmail.
Tony had different themes for their weeks. This week was fantasy week. The girls dressed up in scantily clad armor, thin magician’s outfits, carried fake toy wands and some had painted their entire bodies in bright colors. The sentence ‘ I love your large sword, sir’ would definitely be heavily used this week.
Adonis managed Tony. Even though he was against Nero and Alto’s relationship, he needed a job, so he didn’t refuse. Adonis felt that Nero and Alto had an unequal balance of power, and that one day that Alto would hurt him.
He also hated how much he had changed over the past two years. Nero went from a somewhat strange boy to an overtly sexual, loud, and rude man. Adonis wasn’t sure if it was because he was always working at a strip club if it was Alto’s influence or both.
Tonight, at Tony, only the most connected were there for their VIP night. The girls sold a special new concoction, The Love Potion , as their specialty drink of the night. Nero and Adonis made sure that the girls knew that everyone except the economist at table seven was to get the drink.
They needed a witness.
Nero was getting dressed in the back room. As much as he hated the clothes Uncle made him wear, he loved dressing up. He wore a revealing archer’s outfit, lipstick, and put his hair up in a bun.
It is unbecoming of a prince to command whores, said Unas.
He picked up the sword and whacked it against the wall. It cried out in pain, leaving bloody marks on the painted white cinderblock walls.
Nero went downstairs with the sword and watched as the girls went to work getting everyone in the club as drunk as possible. Pumpkin and Diamond were in charge, making sure that everyone was happy and had a drink in their hand. They ran across the tiled floor, tiled because it was easier to sweep up confetti, glitter, and various drinks and fluids their clients would spill all night.
They were managers and close friends of Nero and also very good enforcers. A customer went up to hug an employee, painted in neon blue glow-in-the-dark paint, but instead, he licked her face, slowly, chuckling while he did so.
The poor employee, an exotic dancer, who went by the name of Chocolate Thunder , went to the back to cry.
Diamond dragged the customer by the collar, her Alterian strength making her twice as strong, and pushed him out the front door, screaming various insults that Nero himself had never heard before.
When she returned, at table eleven, Mr. Puth collapsed.
The music stopped and all the dancers watched as he began to drool, his eyes rolling back into his head. The drunk businessmen panicked as they watched his body shake and seize on the floor, and eventually, pass out. One by one they all fell on the floor, seizing and shaking, begging to be saved. All but one would be spared from the massacre.
It was Aiden at table seven.
“Gods above, why did I even bother getting dressed if no one’s going to see me in my outfit”, yelled Nero.
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“I think you’re focused on the wrong thing right now, Nero”, said Adonis.
“Oh yeah, sorry”, Nero replied. “Go take care of the last one.”
Adonis approached Aiden Till.
He had peed his pants and clutched his chest, waiting for the inevitable to happen. The large, tanned, hulk of a man standing on top of him only solidified that he was going to die in a strip club, and his family would probably refuse to give him a proper funeral.
“I’m so sorry about this”, said Adonis. He dragged Aiden out of the booth and sucker-punched him hard in the stomach, dead-eyed and long normalized to violence as well, never noticing that he was becoming worse, just like Nero.
Aiden cried and begged and promised a lot of money, as Adonis secured his hands behind his back with a zip tie, and carried him like a sack of potatoes. Pumpkin and Diamond went to the storage closet and returned with large canisters of gasoline as all the girls and one Adonis and an Aiden poured out of the club, taking their purses and anything valuable in tow.
Once every inch of the store was covered in gasoline, Pumpkin and Diamond paid their respect to Tony. He had taken good care of them for some time.
“Rest in Piss, Tony,” Diamond said, saluting the building, causing all the girls to giggle.
Aiden screamed as Adonis carried him out of the building with everyone else. “My family is rich”, he screamed. “I promise, I promise you’ll get all the money you want!”
“We don’t want money,” said Nero. “ What I want you can never give. ”
Adonis forced Aiden to look towards Tony. “Wanna see something cool”, asked Nero. Aiden was terrified. Giant tears came down like rain on his face. Between sobs, he uttered a simple no.
“Too bad.”
Nero pointed his finger at Tony and it shot up into flames. Smoke billowed and furled in the sky as people evacuated the businesses nearby. The girls took their chance to sneak away into the crowd as nosy onlookers took photos and recorded the arson on their phones.
The fire was constrained to only Tony.
Nero had spent the past year and a half learning how to control his new power. He could spread and contain the fire at will. He knew that it would look suspicious once the cops arrived that only one building was destroyed, but he didn’t want them to think the fire was an accident.
“Why would you do this,” sobbed Aiden. “Why”?
“To send a message,” said Nero. “I want you to let everyone know that Enemy is tired of not being respected in this town. We will come for you. We will kill you. You breathe today only because we decided so.”
Nero turned to face the building and Aiden saw the tattoo on his neck. The Mark of an Enemy. He knew that what he spoke was true, that he was only breathing in the smoke because of sheer chance. Adonis purposefully pretended to be distracted to give Aiden a chance to escape and he took it.
No one tried to stop him.
“Gods above that was painfully easy”, said Nero. “That idiot will spread the story far and wide that Enemy is behind this, getting the cops off our ass for the rest of the week."
Sirens were wailing in the distance, and it was time to go. “Nero, we have to leave”, said Adonis.
“No, I’m going to stay here,” replied Nero.
“Nero, please, let’s go. The police won’t believe our story if they see us here”, begged Adonis.
“Leave without me. I want to savor the moment.”
Adonis knew that there was nothing he could do to change his mind. Once Nero was sure of something he would do it. Nothing would get in his way once he wanted something.
“Just…. get back home alive”, he sighed.
Adonis got in Pumpkin and Diamond’s car and left because after the two women both attempted to grab him, he lit his arms on fire and glared at them while sneering, mocking them, a child who refused to leave the playground at the end of the day.
They left, and he calmly walked into the burning building as onlookers screamed in vain, wondering why he was trying to bake himself alive. Flames licked at his feet as he walked through the burnt corpses, pieces of the top floor fell down in large chunks.
The remaining parts of the stage burst into flames, his revealing clothes disintegrated as the temperature increased, and soon he was standing naked in the center of the flames.
Does this please you, asked Unas. Do their deaths ease your pain?
“A little. But my heart is still warm. It's on fire.”
Tears came, but they disappeared as fast as they started, steam evaporating from his cheeks.
“I thought that this would make me happy, but it didn’t. All of Enemy needs to burn for what they did to me. ”
Debris from the top floor collapsed, leaving a hole on both floors. Nero could see the moon and stars through the building. The first night in a thousand years had come to greet him and, at that moment, the same moment as he was in Alto’s room, he knew that it was something special.
It was something that no one could take away from him.
He laid down on the floor and gazed at the stars as he watched the world around him burn.