The dynamic in the room had finally shifted… or perhaps equalized was the right word. After all, the immense weight the atmosphere had gained the moment Daemon entered the bar was no longer such a pain on my back. Luckily for me, no amount of weight mattered when a nuclear bomb was zooming through the skies and straight to your city with one goal in mind: destroy everything. That was what Form One: Nuclear Version was built upon.
That was the power I needed to compete with the behemoth in front of me. A behemoth whose very existence caused the space we were in to feel pain and made the environment suffer at the cost of Daemon being. The air would be torn asunder, buildings would crash down, bodies would ignite and be erased entirely—that was the terror a hydrogen bomb would birth from its womb.
Any coward would kneel in hopes of not being caught in the destruction, in hopes that the hydrogen bomb would take mercy on their souls. However, I was no longer kneeling. The only way to defeat a bomb of this caliber was to stand on my own two feet and destroy it with something even bigger.
Our auras clashed, flipping the tables and chairs over, shattering the bottles left on the wall, blowing Dante back and submitting him to the wall on the right. The brown, fur-collared coat over his shoulders flapped like a superhero’s cape as his white pupils dilated. Dante’s giant forcefield seeped into the openings of my back, filling my body with a surge of energy.
“Dad, what the hell are you doing,” screamed Dante. “If you two take this seriously then-”
“Taking this seriously would be a fool’s action, and the only fool here is-”
“Nuclear Fist!”
That was all I needed. All it took was another showcase of Daemon’s overconfidence to catch him off guard with a swift punch to his jaw, the sound of bone shattering echoing across the room. Then, the energy within my fist detonated, eviscerating everything that made the bar what it was as I rocketed into the air.
At least, that's what I intended to do. I was supposed to be flying upwards, and the energy flaring up at my feet was proof that should've made that the case. So confusion began to weigh on me heavily when I realized that my body was moving in the opposite direction I wanted it to go.
I wanted to increase the power of my rocket feet, but doing so would just waste the energy I absorbed earlier. So I decided to bear with it—a decision that Daemon quickly took advantage of.
His hand—beefy and monstrous—loomed before me, a titanic force that dwarfed my body. It was as if a meteor had teleported from space, its sole purpose to obliterate me. Before I could blast it away, the hand slammed into me, its impact like a tidal wave. I was sent hurtling backward, crashing through the town. Buildings crumbled, debris rained down, and chaos followed in my wake until I finally collided with the concrete.
But hesitation wasn’t an option. I shot back up, landing on my feet with a thud. Rage and frustration coursed through me, exploding outward in a barrage of energy bullets that annihilated everything within my vision.
“You scream too loudly.”
Hearing Daemon’s voice behind me, I swung my arm in a wide, wild arc. He dodged quite easily and countered with a punch, driving his fist through my chest.
“Congratulations,” I groaned. “I thought I broke your jaw, but it looks like you’re sturdier than I’d like you to be.”
Daemon’s eye narrowed. “It’s been two years since the Sunvirus has plagued this country. There were once 411,323 survivors in the States. Your daughter has taken the lives of 9,000 of those innocent survivors.”
“So you’re finally giving my daughter’s disease a name?”, I chuckled, grabbing his arm. The punch hurt like a bitch, and it didn’t help that his arm was still lodged in my body. “Unlike you, I won't sacrifice the life of my daughter to please the rest of you. You won’t have to worry about people dying once me and her find a cure.”
He struck my face, but I didn’t let go. “You'd sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands finding a cure that doesn't exist for one girl?”
I punched his face, but Daemon didn’t pull out. “I'd sacrifice the lives of everyone to save that girl, and then rebuild it all from scratch.”
“Survivors are already clawing their way through this world. Zombies, mutated beasts, criminals of all shapes and sizes—so many things in this world want them dead, and yet they still cling on to their survival. You gain nothing by adding more problems for them.”
“Oh, please… Don’t give me some BS argument about survival. I’ve seen the lengths these ‘survivors’ will go to save their own ass, like leaving me and my own child to die in a fucking Walmart! They’ll betray anyone, kill anyone, kill children just to further their own selfish desires, just to survive. That’s what survival is, a gaping pit waiting to swallow you all.”
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It looked like Daemon was about to laugh at that reply, though he stopped abruptly. “Survival isn't a pit… survival is a ladder.”
Something unexpected happened. I had his right arm restrained using all the strength I could muster while his left hand was stuffed in his pockets. I knew that for sure. And yet something had plucked my head clean off my neck. My head soared, weightless, my body below shrinking out of reach.
Did he move faster than I could see or was this ‘cause of his Radius Ability?! I didn’t know what the answer was, but I knew what I had to do.
“Nuclear Clones!”
Energy in the shape of my headless body emerged, appearing on both sides of Daemon. A barrage of brutal strikes followed while my head descended back to the ground. Punches to the man’s face, kicks to his torso, and blood painting the dark concrete. So many attacks, and none of them were a killing blow. It didn’t matter how much blood was spilled from his skull, the guy just wouldn’t die.
A fact that would become more apparent as my clones went for another blow at the same time. I felt the same things my clones felt and experienced the same things they experienced—even without my body—so when I landed on the ground, I didn’t feel anything from them. The feeling of beaten flesh or blood wasn’t there. Daemon was still between the clones, and yet it was like their fists had phased through his head.
Then, Daemon detonated.
A flash of green light blew me back, but I was luckily caught by one of my clones before I was lost in the town again.
“Don’t just stand around,” I shouted. “Hurry up and absorb me!”
The clone pressed his fingers deep into my bone, doing as I ordered. Power surged through the clone as the process completed, its head reforming. With my head absorbed, the clone wasn’t just a separate being anymore; I had taken its body. The second clone landed next to me, and I immediately took notice of his severed arm.
“You have the balls to appear next to me after that pathetic display of combat you showed earlier?” I pointed my palm at him. “Regenerate quickly.”
The clone absorbed the ball I shot at him, his head regenerating. “Let’s not forget that you were the one who got his head sliced off so pathetically. Maybe I’m the one who should be the original and you the clone.”
“Watch yourself, clone,” I replied, ascending to the sky. “I can have you disappear faster than I made you!”
If somebody told me Daemon’s Radius ability was to do the most random shit imaginable, then I’d believe them. Especially when the guy was currently walking on the damn air like we were still on the ground.
The sections of my chest opened up like a machine revealing the core of its existence within itself. My clone zoomed towards Daemon and held him back by his arms, giving me the perfect opportunity to release a blast I was sure would utterly destroy that bastard. Although, that didn’t seem it’d be a hard thing to accomplish considering the man wasn’t struggling to get out at all.
It looked like he was inviting me to attack. Or was this a trap? No, he wouldn’t do that. Daemon was the kind of guy to assert his dominance over others by shutting down everything they threw at him with sheer force alone. What a foolish move…
His overconfidence was gonna get him killed.
“Nuclear Omnibeam!”
The blue beam ripped out of my chest, roaring forward, slicing through the air like a condensed tsunami. While the blast was so massive that it blocked my view of the target ahead of me, I could still feel that the Omnibeam made contact with something physical, seemingly engulfing the two. When the light faded, the noise had as well, leaving nothing but silence in the air.
The space where Daemon and my duplicate were was now void, but the feeling I hadn’t won yet still lingered.
“Beams, blast, and more beams.”
My imaginary stomach sank when I realized the voice above belonged to Daemon. If he wasn’t already strange as hell, he was now walking on the sky downwards to me.
I fired another blast at Daemon, this time from the gaping hole that was now my mouth. It didn't come out how I wanted it to. Instead of something big and mighty, it came out puny and weak, dissipating halfway through.
Whether I was running low on energy or Daemon had changed it somehow, I was pretty screwed.
“Why is your answer to everything the most basic attacks imaginable?”, he asked politely.
“It’s ’cause those ‘basic attacks’ usually work. Maybe you haven’t noticed yet, but I’ve been holding back this entire time,” I lied. “I was hoping I could destroy half your face like I did with Dante. It’d be a nice improvement!”
“I thought with this special form of yours that you would actually show me something interesting, something that makes you deserving of that power. The clones were alright… for a bit, but you’re still so basic with your ability.”
I laughed, folding my arms. “Throw some energy my way and I‘ll kill you with something really special.”
Daemon sighed and said, “It looks like this form changes your personality quite a bit. More rash and cocky than before. How are you ever going to reverse the effects of the apocalypse at this rate?”
“I still don’t really care what you guys mean by that. I already have something way more important in my mind.”
Daemon’s aura erupted like a volcano spitting out lava. “Then I’ll have to flush out those selfish desires and teach you a bit about selflessness.”