“No? What the fuck do you mean, NO?!”

Jack sighed, turning his head as Selfia’s holographic projection yelled and screamed.

“As I said, we're going to help these people, not condemn them. We were here to help them,” Jack replied.

“Noooooo, what we were here to do is KILL the Green Bishop! Kill. K-I-L-L. KILL! KILL! Not increase my workload!” Selfia yelled, slamming her robotic fist down on her desk before she groaned loudly, “Still… you captured him, so we'll use this opportunity to pry some information out of him. Di’luk- oh wait she isn't here… Leona! Jin! One of you get in here and order up a vat of acid!”

“Selfia, focus, my plan?”

Selfia frowned, eyeing Jack with a look of skepticism.

“If you can get them to behave and that's what you want to do, then by all means. You're the King, if this is what you think is best, as your wife I guess I'll have to support you every once in awhile,” Selfia said with little resistance much to Jack's surprise. “Of course, I can't spare any resources with Roland's fucking SURPRISE offensive so you'll have to make do with the troops you have.”

“...huh.” Python let out, mirroring Jack, Sahaqiel, and even Ruby’s sentiments, the latter of which sat on in a corner munching on a chocolate bar.

“So, have you gotten anything out of him yet?” Selfia asked, pulling up what appeared to be a holographic image of a satellite before swatting it away.

“Nothing yet your Majesty, we've been waterboarding him for two hours but all he's been doing is praying,” Python reported. “I don't think we'll get anything out of him this way.”

“Figured,” Selfia sighed. “Fanatics like him are the fuuuuuuucking worse.”

“I do have a way to get information out of him,” Jack said, drawing all eyes. “It's not pretty, but it'll work.”

Inside Jack, the malevolent spirit flared, the hungry specter looking forward to what was to come.

“Aw, and I was wanting to use the acid vat,” Selfia groaned, “Well, whatever, microwave his hamster, peel off his foreskin with a razor, force feed him glass, so long as he gives us something useful I don't care what you do. Keep me posted and don't move that city until we clear it for transportation. Who knows what those grubby little lunatics in the church are doing to it right now.”

Selfia shot a look at Python, the latter of which nodded before Jack spoke up.

“Anyway, thank you Selfia, we'll keep you updated,” Jack said before the Queen waved her hand as the hologram fizzled out.

****

“So, she took being told no better than I thought,” Python asked as he and Jack stood on the observation deck of the MECHFrame launchbay.

“I was just as surprised, now its up to Lita and the Templars to agree,” Jack replied, “I take it you're here with me to babysit me during my talk with the Bishop.”

Python fell silent before he chuckled, “Yeah, Selfia wants to make sure you don't murder him.”

“What? Don't trust me?”

“Not to kill the man?” Python scoffed, “I know what you're capable of lad, If you have to get your hands dirty to get what you want you won't hesitate. In a way you're very much like Selfia.”

“How so?” Jack furrowed his brow with Python pausing as he twirled a daylily leaf between his lips.

“Passionate,” Python replied. “You two may have different methods, ideologies, and sense of right n wrong but you both want good things and go to great lengths to achieve it. Really, I guess at the end of the day it's all bout whose willing to go the furthest for their goals.”

Jack shut the journal he was reading, his mind on the Green Bishop's mocking and monologue.

“Do you think I'm too soft?” Jack asked with Python falling silent for a moment.

"..."

“I just don't want to be a monster at the end of all this,” Jack sighed. “Selfia is willing to murder countless innocents, men, women, and even children to get what she wants. She lies to everyone she knows and probably even lies to herself. And quite frankly the only reason I trust her is because I trust in her vision for the futu-”

Jack paused, looking down at Leslie's journal.

“-huh.”

“Come to an epiphany?”

“Something like that,” Jack said, turning around and heading towards the brig with Python in tow.

“Care to share?”

“It's occurred to me that we don't actually know what the High Table is fighting for,” Jack said, turning down a corridor and holding up Jena's journal. “We know their facilities, parts of their plans, their methods, but we don't know what they're fighting for or what motivates them.”

“So what are you about to do?” Python asked, standing in front of Jack to block his path from the cell door that contained his quarry.

“Find out,” Jack said before pushing the man to the side and entering the torture chamber.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Within a twenty foot square room devoid of light hung a man, one beaten, bruised, and actively bleeding from wounds unable to be healed thanks to the suppressant devices attached to his chest.

“Ah… Sasha… I knew you'd… come,” Hugo Fritz, formerly the Green Bishop eked out as he weakly gazed at Jack.

*SMACK!*

“You don't have the right to speak that name,” Jack growled, holding back his strength just enough that he didn't break the man's neck.

Python folded his arms, watching nearby with focused eyes to make sure Jack didn't kill their prisoner.

“It brings me joy to see my child grown,” Hugo said as Jack flexed his hands, staring down at the man looking up.

Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him. Phantom words, hissed from Lilith's mouth.

“I'm going to punch you now,” Jack said coldly before cocking his fist back that was caught by a vine.

“Hey... we need him alive,” Python said, a vine snaking out from his boot to catch Jack's arm with grassy tendrils.

“I'm aware. I don't plan on killing him, at least not quickly,” Jack replied before ripping himself free of the vines and knocking several teeth out of the Green Bishop's mouth. “Hm... That didn't make me feel better.”

Hugo let out a chuckle as blood leaked from his mouth, “The Black King… Would be delighted… by who you are now…”

“Hm,” Jack knelt, bringing himself to eye level with his prisoner. “That's where you're wrong. He's not going to like me.”

Jack reached over, grabbing the man's thinning hair and yanking him up to look Jack in the eye.

“You see, I know something he doesn't,” Jack said, glaring at the man as Python looked on inquisitively.

“Sasha…” Hugo muttered in disbelief, eyes wide as a hand tightened against his throat while fingers reached into his mouth.

“I told you,” Jack said, his fingers gripping the slimy tongue attempting to wiggle away. “You don't deserve to say that name.”

Jack pulled, taking with it a gush of blood that splattered on his face.

“Can I say that name?” Python asked, curious about whom he was referring to.

“I rather you didn't,” Jack replied, his eyes producing a dangerous glare.

“Right,” Python said, wondering what Selfia hoped he or anyone for that matter be able to do if Jack wanted the man dead. “But now I wonder how your going to get him to talk with no tongue.”

“Easy,” Jack said as a dark shadow appeared over him as he felt Sahaqiel's disapproval. “By ripping his mind apart.”

“N-nwo!” Hugo exclaimed through his bleeding mouth.

Before Python could intervene, Jack's hand swathed in shadows slapped against the flailing man's head, directly over his eyes. "You see... I learned something rather recently after thinking about my last run in with your King. About illusions and prying out information."

"NW! NUH!" Hugo screamed, his eyelids forced open to stare into Jack's glowing eyes.

“What do you see?” Jack and Lilith's voice echoed as the duo projected their will onto the man.

Lilth’s ability was deconstruction, obliteration, and consumption with the true essence of Gehenna being to take and subsume.

A handcrafted weapon that should have been broken when her psyche was shattered by an angel. Yet here she was, a variable unaccounted for by the Black King.

Hugo groaned, attempting to resist as dark tendrils leapt from Jack's hand to stab into his victim.

“The hell…” Python muttered, taking a step back as the shadows in the room started to flicker. According to Jack's dossier, there was nothing about this on file.

“Show me what I desire,” Jack commanded as blood began to sleep from Hugo's orifices. Fortunately Jack was a healer, allowing him to keep the Bishop alive as he attempted to shift through the man's mind. “Why do you fight?”

“Love.”

The word that was uttered sickened Jack. But more than that, was the sense of devotion, the sense of justice, and worst, affection Jack felt emanating from the Bishop's mind.

Taken aback, Jack's fingers subconsciously dug into the Bishop's skin, tearing the flesh as the skull let out an audible crack.

“Jac-” Python began but flinched as raven wings manifested around Jack.

“Love? LOVE?!” Jack roared, the voice that left his mouth not his but Lilith's. “Tell me what I wish to know! What does the Black King want?!”

"Guh! GUUUUH!" The Bishop's head shifted, skin tearing as he forcefully tried to look away.

“Tell me what I want to know!” Jack roared, glaring into the man's eyes as memories belonging to Hugo Fritz entered his mind.

Images. Hundreds of them. Broken stills that were sporadic, fractured, unintelligible mostly save for the few images of a well dressed man who looked like an older version of Jack.

There were others too. Each wearing white suits with fedoras, each body different but ultimately being possessed by the one Jack knew as the Black King.

“AAAAAAAAHG!!” Hugo screamed, the howls leaving his mouth nerve-shattering even to Python who turned away.

“Tell me what the Black King wants!” Jack roared, pushing Hugo's face back with the man’s eyes adopting a golden color.

“I-i-I!” Hugo muttered, shaking his head violently as hundreds of pictures poured from his mind.

“SHOW ME!”

“Jack!” Python called out, attempting to reach out to stop the torture only to retreat. Around Jack he could make out another presence, a black-haired woman glaring with pure hatred in her eyes, the raven woman latching onto the Bishop.

“Prosperity! Salvation! The King! The KING! Solomon!” Hugo shrieked, his eyes bulging with blood seeping from his sockets. "He will grant humanity prosperity!"

A memory of a memory passed before Jack's eyes, an image of a spectral being with golden wings, a knight holding a flaming sword and a staff.

And then, like that, Jack's heart paled as Sahaqiel’s shock and anger broke through.

This confirmed what the angel already knew, she had hoped it wasn't the case but now, everything made sense to her as she turned away from Jack.

“Solomon. Solomon!” The word kept echoing from the Bishop's mouth.

“Jack! Enough! We need him alive!” Python yelled as several commandos entered the room.

“No. Not yet! He still needs to tell me where my sister is,” Jack growled, his hands firmly pressed into the man's skull. “WHERE IS SHE?! Where is Jill Knight?!”

Jill.

The image of a green-haired girl appeared in Hugo's mind, a child holding hands with a white-haired man who bore a striking resemblance to Selfia.

“Bastards,” Jack hissed.

Jack released the man, his brow furrowed, face twisted in a snarl as he stood back to eye his handiwork.

Immediately medics went to work on the Bishop, tending to his wounds as Jack turned and left, leaving his prisoner dangling lifelessly with blood leaking from every orifice as he left the room.