Giant green weeds burst through the asphalt ground and expanded rapidly. In less than ten seconds, the vines had grown to a towering height, surpassing all other buildings in Gotham City.
A dark shadow was cast on the citizens of Gotham below.
“Damn it! I knew I should have moved out earlier”. A man stuck out his head from the car window, looked at the giant plant that was now a massive behemoth then took a look at his car roof that had majority of his earthly possessions onboard.
He couldn't help but swear viciously with eyes of despair before immediately putting the gear on reverse and stepping on the gas.
Gotham this year had been plagued with unprecedented tragedies beyond the norm.
Even worse than Metropolis.
The death of that wretched clown didn't seem to be improving things. His wife had died in the recent goblin invasion.
Now as he mustered up the courage to abandon his stable job and only property that he couldn't sell for a month, this happened.
The nearby crowd immediately fell into chaos.
Everyone close to the scene immediately took to their heels, running as fast as their legs could carry them. The moment the first person ran, others followed in torrents.
In a matter of seconds, numerous accidents took place. Car drivers in Gotham reversing at full speed in a state of panic obviously wouldn't give a damn about those who would possibly be hit by the rear end.
Numerous people were cleared off their feet, hit a distance away or even run over directly amidst the chaos.
The numbers of collisions began to accumulate.
So did the death toll.
Many people, men, women, and children were run over in the fast-moving stampede.
It was worse than being first in line at a Black Friday sale.
At that moment, a cloud of negative emotions suddenly swept over towards Amari's mind.
Amari's eyes twitched slightly as he felt mild discomfort.
Feeling the slight throbbing, he couldn't help but place his hand on his head.
The giant plant that had grown more than a hundred feet tall suddenly sprouted out numerous vines that shot in all directions.
“Fuck! Run!” A man and his wife immediately abandoned their car and took to their heels.
Bang!
A vine accurately latched onto their previous vehicle, lifting it into the air before shooting it towards a nearby building.
The impact caused the glass to shatter. The destruction didn't stop there as a vine stretched towards a building, wrapping its length around it and squeezing.
Bang!
The building shook to its core. Debris fell in all directions as glass and cement rocks fell from the tall building.
A giant vine swept over in one direction. Dozens of people fleeing for their lives were smashed to a bloody pulp, leaving nothing more than pieces of flesh, blood and dismembered limbs.
“My........ God!…".
The blonde Peter looked at the carnage going on outside the window with shock and horror.
The vines were expanding, extending in range.
This...... This wasn't right. Didn't Gotham just suffer a major incident a few weeks ago? How could another disaster suddenly take place so soon?
Gotham was synonymous for crime…. Not supernatural disasters.
The scared twenty-year-old student couldn't help but take several steps back in panic. However, the performance of the person a distance away from him immediately caught his attention.
“Ugh!” Amari fell down on one knee, his eyes closed, and his fists clenched tightly.
At this moment, the recently made New God wasn't feeling too well.
“What..... The hell”. In a single moment, millions of thoughts were going through his mind simultaneously.
Crashes, explosions, the rushing of the wind, a falling rock, cries, shouts, the flapping wings of a fly, feelings, thoughts........
In less than a nanosecond, he felt it all and more.
The most outstanding thing was the screams. The droves of civilians scattering like mice, fleeing for their lives, their frantically beating hearts, their overly panicked emotions.......
Then it delved deeper into that.
The world was suddenly divided into a myriad of colors. Each and every living thing he could sense was giving out a different color respective to their emotional changes at the time.
The Emotional Spectrum.
“Man, are you ok?” Peter couldn't help but ask, seeing his mysterious guest suddenly fall to his knees and groan.
Amari couldn't answer. The words of the boy he just met were lost in the multitude of things he was currently experiencing.
Waves of negative emotions seemed to rush into his mind, constantly filling him up despite how much he tried to keep them out
He could feel it all.
He could feel their pain, fear, anger, hatred, sorrow, despair.......
The cries of people in various stages across the city. It was.......
For a second, he saw them all. Their faces marred in panic, fear, with tears and snot. He could literally feel the aura of desperation they gave off.
The reek of it ringing in his ears and playing before his eyes. All of Gotham was within his senses..... He could feel the negative emotions, not from its citizens but from the city itself.
Then that passed and another followed.
He knew what was happening in the pizza shop seven miles away from his position, as well as what angle a centimeter sized piece of dirt among thousands was falling in the crumbling building across.
Then ......... It started to branch out.
Billions of bits and pieces of unwanted info found itself to him without his permission.
He knew what each and every single soul in Gotham had for food between the hours of noon to midnight yesterday.
What Hydrogen molecule was in the air a few centimeters away from him this time three months ago.
And where exactly it was now.
It was all....... So much.
Seeing Amari's figure, Peters body trembled slightly. He wanted to run, run and escape as far away as he could.
However, he hesitated.
“Dude..... Come on, we've gotta go”. He rushed towards Amari trying to pull him up but found to his surprise that he couldn't make the very muscular male kneeling beside him move an inch.
He turned around and assumed a kneeling posture, hoping to talk him into getting up but what he met was nothing but glowing blue eyes.
Amari wasn't looking at him. His consciousness had been drawn back to his mindscape.
The darkness wasn't strange anymore, neither was it pleasant but from what he previously went through, it suddenly gave off a soothing feeling of silence.
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However, a frown quickly emerged on his features.
The Mindscape was trembling, changing........ Numerous structures were appearing out of thin air.
“What's happening?” Amari asked.
“Simple. You're knowing”. The voice coming from the distance immediately drew his attention.
The pitch-black floor suddenly rose in front of him. Then it began to squirm and form like some kind of liquid substance before it gained a definite shape.
Still, it was too far off and the space was too dark to see what it was.
A silence suddenly appeared in the space as everything happening around him seemed to be hit with a mute button.
Only the clear sound of footsteps could be heard as the dark figure walked closer to him.
“And you must be.....?”
What appeared before his vision was walking substance that was pure black with no face.
“I'm what is responsible for this aspect of the Mindscape under enhancement the moment you decided to turn yourself into a New God”.
The figure replied in a monotone voice.
“Ok.....”. Amari tilted his head slightly.
“So what exactly are you?”
“Don't you feel it?”
And so, the black figure began to squirm. Facial outlines began to appear on its face and its stature began to change rapidly.
Amari watched with no amazement as the black figured morphed to look exactly like......
“I.....”.
“..... Am you”.
There was a short period of silence.
“Alright. Well taken”.
For the words of the other........ party, Amari didn't have any doubts. Just frowned with slightly squinted eyes.
"You said I'm knowing. Knowing what?"
The other party tilted his head to the side, imitating Amari's movements with a look of looking at an idiot.
“Simple. You're knowing Everything”.
And with that, it gestured to the structures being created.
“This body isn't regular anymore. Now, we're New Gods. And we are developing our abilities”.
“You're me. You should know what's happening”.
He was right. Amari could feel it the moment he woke up.
He was knowing everything about everything.
It wasn't the same as when he examined things with an “Inspect” perspective.
This was ....... cosmic awareness.
“Initial cosmic awareness”. The other party said lightly with an indifferent expression.
“With time, it'll be true omniscience”.
Most New gods had Cosmic awareness. Darkseid did, so did Highfather. But neither of them had Omniscience.
That was reserved for higher beings. Like...... Lucifer.
“It's unpleasant”.
“No one said knowing everything would be a pleasure”.
“But I already have Omniscience”.
“Do you?” The other party asked with a smile of amusement.
Amari's eyes narrowed.
“We already did”.
“It was flawed. Relying on our ability to manipulate energy for anything, you could gain the answer for anything on the grounds we had said energy. Something else that is flawed”.
“So?”
“That isn't true omniscience”. The other party shook his head.
“The same way, our ability doesn't truly make us omnipotent. I guess it can only be chalked up to Semi-omnipotence”.
“We never knew everything. Just what they wanted us to”.
“They?” Amari raised an eyebrow.
“Those who manipulated us. Made us think we are all powerful, when in fact, we aren't”.
“But we're......”.
“Not what you think we are”. He cut Amari short.
“The origin, you remember, is nothing more than a lie. By now, you should know.....”.
Once again, Amari's view faded it into that of a third person. He saw himself in a house, a cramped one. It didn't have any decent furniture, neither was it the slightest bit good-looking.
It looked like something you could rent for less than a hundred bucks per month in the Gotham slums.
This scene only lasted for a split second before returning to how he was.
“See”.
“That's our life. Our past life”.
“Show me”.
“I can't”. He said with a shrug. “Our halves are only fragments. Completely insufficient to know the full details”. His tone was bland, and his face remained expressionless.
“But once our cosmic awareness develops to omniscience, we'll know what we want to know”.
“Then why wait that long? Why not just accumulate enough energy to get the answer ourselves?”
“Because we come from beyond the fourth wall”.
Amari's figure trembled slightly.
If restrained, the urge to utter the word "Fuck”.
“The energy required for that is not what we can possess in a short term. The Godsphere doesn't even have a quarter of the power needed to breach it. The source can barely account for twenty percent. Not even the presence can accomplish that without paying a price”.
So basically, it was a standstill.
However....... That didn't explain something else.
“Who are they?” Unexpectedly, the other half shook his head.
“What? You don't know?”
“That's not it. It's just that, you have other things to deal with right now”.
At that moment........
“Ugh!”
It all came back.
The negative emotions that he had receded into his mindscape to escape from swept over like a tide.
Fear, Pain, Anger, Loss, Despair, Desperation........ The pain of thousands of people and counting moved towards him, completely unfiltered.
“What...... What is this?” Amari asked while struggling.
“We stole magic from the Godsphere to become Gods. We succeeded, but that doesn't mean there aren't repercussions. When the process was completed we created a crack in our mindscape causing a distinct split in our consciousness. And as a result of the increase in our abilities, we're more attuned to reality and can feel the changes in it at a deeper level. What you're currently experiencing is the emotional aspect while I shoulder the others. The fear, pain, joy, anger....... Every emotional change exhibited by any living thing within your detection range. You're sensing it all. Whether you want to, or not”.
Amari clutched his ears in pain, even though this action wouldn't help in the slightest.
Despite the fact that they had been talking for minutes now, a second hadn't even elapsed in the real world since this whole thing began.
He could quite literally feel their misery. Feeling the emotional changes of so many people, it was almost driving him to insanity.
Was this how people felt whenever they were about to die?
Or even encountered a mild crisis?
“Why....... Why aren't....... you ...... affected?”
The other party shrugged again.
“I am being affected. But as the aspect of our consciousness that symbolizes indifference, I can't show it. Plus, what influences me isn't emotional, but more logical”.
He pointed towards Amari and continued to speak.
“I said our consciousness was split. I represent the aspect of our indifference, while you represent the emotional aspect that actually gives a damn about anything. Although before the crack, I was mainly the dominant personality, so our actions were what they were. Now however, things are different”.
“Dealing with this aspect, is your job”.
“Make it stop”.
“I can't”.
“Make it stop”.
“No can do”.
Bright waves of pure white energy emanated from Amari's figure and the mental space quaked.
The whole area was illuminated by a luminous white aura.
“I Said.......”.
Listening to the thousands of negative emotions flooding towards him..... Amari's face carried a slightly hideous expression.
“........ Make It Stop!!!”
A violent roar echoed, and the luminous energy illuminated everything.
Back in the real world.
A giant vine wrapped around the Peter's building.
“Oh no!” Seeing this scene, Peter felt distraught.
Even if he ran with all his might, there was no way he would make it to the exit in time.
“Make it stop”. He heard Amari mutter.
“It's over man”. Peter uttered as he fell back on his butt, a look of helplessness etched on his features.
He was not convinced that he would come to this point so quickly.
“Make it stop!”
“Hey man…. You don't get it…. We're about to...... Huh?” His words were stuck at the back of his throat as he saw the male figure he had pulled into his apartment suddenly emit a dazzling white.
At that moment, the vines squeezed.
Bang!
“I Said, Make It Stop!”
It happened then. A wave of pure, undulated power spread throughout the whole city. It was formless, colorless, practically translucent.
Wherever it passed, everything changed reapidly.
Less than a nanosecond later, the wave stopped at the edge of Gotham.
And everything within Gotham city had been brought back to normal. The plants were gone, the destruction was gone, and those who just died were standing on their own two feet.
Everyone standing moving on the road didn't look like they had just experienced anything.
"Hey Move it. I'm trying to get out of this damned city".
The man who lost his wife and abandoned his house screamed at the truck in front of him that refused to love even after the green light came back on.
It was like what they just experienced had never happened at all.