Richard and Michelle enjoyed a lovely lunch in a downtown Italian restaurant chosen by the former. The young lady enjoyed a Ceasar salad and pavlova cake, while Richard had decided to go for white truffle tagliatelle.
Robert loved Italian food, and thus all of his split personalities loved it.
In spite of stereotypes, Michelle had been a great conversationist, and Richard immensely enjoyed his time.
While the two of them got to know each other, Rochelle had surpassed Richard's expectations and went to check the crime scene herself. The building where Balzac had committed a massacre rivaling war crimes had been surrounded and filled by police personnel of every kind.
Forensics combed every inch of the building, documenting everything. Police, FBI, and even NSA had spread around the bloc, interrogating passersby and seizing footage from cameras.
In this chaos, one extra detective quickly managed to slip in and conduct her investigation. Rochelle toured the macabre scene Robert had painted with bullets and more esoteric means.
After a hundred, she lost count of the dead bodies and stopped searching for the truth. There was no conspiracy or cover-up; Robert had massacred everyone in this building and then lied to her. She couldn't believe how easily he had slipped under her guard.
Then she felt nauseous. All of this was her fault. She had unleashed this monster on her crusade against crime, and as is often the case, the ends didn't justify the means.
She stared at what remained of a little girl holding a doll close to her chest. Rochelle wondered whether the girl had been seeking safety or trying to save the doll when she hugged it. However, it didn't matter; a high-caliber shot had gone through both of them.
Rochelle felt her head spinning and couldn't stay there anymore. Every breath felt dirty. She ran out of the building and sat on the stairs, holding her head. Tears pooled around her eyes.
"I just wanted to save this city; how could this happen." Guilt tore through her. "There is only one thing I can do now." She said, observing the crowd of police around her.
-------------------
Richard went and paid for the dinner with Rochelle's stolen card. As the two of them left the restaurant, arms linked, Richard decided it was time to get what he was owed.
"So, was this lunch date worth your soul, or am I full of shit?" Richard said with a chuckle.
"Mhh." Michelle rubbed her chin and looked pensively at the sky. "Well, you are full of it, but the food made up for it. I would say it was worth half of it. You'll have to do better if you want the rest." She said, sticking out her tongue.
"Oh really? People are dying to meet with me, but you are so adorable I'll let it slide. Tell you what, pay me in advance now, and I'll bring you somewhere outside your imagination." Robert said with an intriguing smile.
"Somewhere outside my imagination? Detroit?" She replied by guessing the last place she would ever imagine going on a date.
"Close, but no cigar." He replied mockingly. He was thinking of the only place worse than Detroit, Hell.
"C'mon, tell me." She said with a pout.
"Sorry, you know what to do..." he teased.
"Fine, deal! My soul for this mystery date!" She said, throwing her arms in the air.
"Deal." Richard declared with a big grin on his face. The next moment Michelle's face turned ugly.
"What's going on? Why do I feel-" She looked in horror at Richard, and then, with a scream of pain, she exploded in a shower of light and then flew into Richard's mouth.
He burped lightly and then massaged his stomach; he felt full and warm, every cell in his body rejoicing in the burst of energy many times bigger than when he killed the chemist On Sefora or the five cultists that brought him here.
"Shame I couldn't take her home first, but this feeling more than makes up for it." Then, he observed the passersby; someone was bound to have seen; Thankfully, only two of them looked in horror at him, and Richard immediately dealt with them.
The first was an old lady watering her balcony plants. A quick "Pull." later, she had become a suicide victim. Number two was a boy around thirteen. A sudden heart attack would be too suspicious, so Richard used "Push." and smacked his head against the wall. To any observer, it would seem as if the boy had hit his head in a moment of carelessness.
"That's enough. Good job, Richard, but it's time to go home." A voice interrupted Richard.
"Aye aye, Captain Steven." Richard scoffed but didn't fight with the voices in his head. That's what crazy people do.
Instead of taking public transport, Richard took a long stroll to get back to his apartment. Autumn had started setting in, but most trees were still untouched by it. A cool breeze blew from behind him and reminded him of home.
All the personalities were born from Robert and shared their full memory. Each derived from traumas or ideals; Balzac was Robert's animosity toward the world and his desire for freedom. Richard, his wish to be able to socialize normally, and so on.
They felt deeply protective of each other and towards Robert. He could both be considered their father as they had been born of him, but also their protector.
Somewhere deep, he still existed, turned away from the world after the torment he received when he died. However, all the fragments of his mind wished him to be back; until then, they would watch over him.
Richard arrived at the apartment. The sun had just touched the horizon painting everything in orange light. He went up the stairs and entered the apartment. Rochelle was back.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
She sat on the armchair, her gaze downcast.
"Hey, Rochelle, what's with the long face?" he asked, noticing her sullen mood.
She took a deep breath and spoke. "Hello, Robert Sandford."
A lightning bolt shook Richard to his roots. "How do you know that name?" He asked, frowning. All the voices had gone quiet, equally shook by her.
"Shouldn't I? My dear Robert Sandford, it's not like you hid it exceptionally well. I had your name, and I knew what you looked like. For a determinate person, that's all it takes." Again, the name shook Richard; for some reason hearing his name spoken up deeply affected him.
"Stop saying that name!" He yelled, panic affecting his thoughts.
"Hmpf. They said it would shake you up. They gave me some babble about souls and whatnot as to why. But I have my theory. Hearing your name before you became..." She gestured to him. "Well, this reminds you of a time when you weren't a monster, a time where instead you would have been disgusted with yourself. Robert Sandford." She punctuated with a smirk.
"Shut the fuck up. Bang." He cast his spell, hoping to kill her quickly, but nothing happened.
"What? Are you disappointed to see me standing up? Maybe you aren't in the right state of mind to focus on your hocus pocus, huh? My dear R-O-B-E-R-T S-A-N-D-F-O-R-D." Every letter stabbed at Richard's soul. To escape this barrage, Richard kneeled and covered his ears.
"Well, that was quick. If it were up to me, I would be placing a bullet in your forehead and call it a day." She sighed and placed a laptop on the coffee table. "However, the Burea of Paranormal Affairs wants to have a chat for you. Be nice to them. They taught me a lot about dealing with scum like you."
"Why?" Richard asked as he tried getting up. He looked at Rochelle and saw nothing but spite.
"You lied to me, and you massacred a whole building full of civilians. Did you think you could use a loophole to turn our deal to your advantage, and I wouldn't even be angry?" She opened the laptop. "By the way, the deal is off. If you want my soul, you'll have to take it the old-fashioned way." She said and leaned back in her chair.
The laptop screen turned on, and a well-dressed man appeared. Richard couldn't see his face as a veil of darkness covered it.
"Good evening Mr. Sandford. I'm an agent with the BPA; you can call me Mr. Smith." The man's voice was deep and calm. "I can only imagine what events you went through since the day you died. In only a month, you managed to come back with enough power to clean up a whole city if not properly repelled. That kind of impressive power is precisely what the BPA is interested in. We would like to employ your services to maintain peace in the supernatural community. You would have to give up certain..." he paused, looking for the right word. "freedoms, due to your propensity to wanton slaughter. Still, naturally, we are ready to offer a number of benefits, one of which..."
Mr. Smith disappeared from the screen, replaced with an older man Richard immediately recognized. "Rob?"
The shock of this appearance surpassed by many orders of magnitude being called by his real name.
From the depths of whatever metaphysical space the personalities inhabiting Robert's mind lived in, a head turned, overwhelming all the others and seizing control from Richard.
"Papa?" Robert's voice sounded small. He had been asleep for so long, but his father's voice had immediately awakened him.
"Oh, Rob! I thought I had lost you. How could you do this to me? If not for the police warming me they had found you in America, I would still be placing flowers on your grave." The man almost cried out of sheer strength of emotions. "My boy, I'm so happy to see you again."
"Shut up." Robert's voice came like thunder in a clear sky.
"What did you say?" Even his father couldn't believe what he heard.
"I am not, and I was never your fucking BOY. You gave up on me when I needed you the most! You dirty old coward, so afraid I could get hurt, you treated me like an unruly bird and clipped my wings. You stole my freedom, my future, and my life. A prisoner inside my head and during my penance, I never doubted your good intentions. However, I woke up after Celeste's death. I finally saw the world for what it was and took back my freedom by throwing away my chains." Robert stood up and thundered at the screen, his father cowering behind it.
"So what if I died? You probably felt like you failed, and you are right! You failed in keeping me stuck. I took back my voice and conquered my freedom to choose and die! And here you are once again, coming to rob me of what I achieved." He took off his hat and showed the majestic horns underneath.
The horns had grown to almost 20 cm. They curved backward with their beautiful jet-black obsidian body. On close observation, you could see faint red veins snaking their way to the top.
"Look at what you created. Look at these horns I grew with the blood of hundreds of innocents. Those who try and push my head down will join me as fertilizer instead. This meeting is adjourned." He declared like a king.
Robert looked at the laptop and crushed it with a glance. He didn't need to use the little magic words. He had dozens of independent minds doing the thinking for him. If one were to try and explain the difference between his mind and others, it could be said that at this moment, he had a multiprocessor instead of a brain.
This state of synchronicity would be impossible for the other alter egos. Still, they worked like cogs in his sick head under Robert's true primary persona.
Whatever Robert wanted, his separate personalities would deliver. He looked at Rochelle, ready to split her in half and claim her soul after she had broken their deal. However, a bullet went through the window and passed between the horns, barely missing his head.
Robert immediately devoted his right horn to gathering and maintaining a kinetic shield around him. The second bullet hit him and erupted in light, having been successfully intercepted. However, as the third bullet was about to be shot.
"Robert Sandford! I told them a rabid dog like you had to be put down fast!" Rochelle's voice hit him more potent than a bullet. The shield wavered, and the third bullet happily entered his shoulder.
"Fuck!" Robert rolled into the corridor, away from the windows, and dashed into the toilet, locking the door.
"Robert Sandford, what do you think you are doing hiding in there?" Rochelle kept calling his name, torturing him. "Think we will give you time to recover? Robert Sandford Robert Sandford Robert Sandford!"
She enjoyed the feeling of payback until, with a creak, the door opened.
"Robert Sandford, finally ready to give up?" She said, readying her gun to put him down.
"Sorry, what? I can't hear you." Robert came out, blood trickling from his mauled ears. He held a bloodied mirror fragment in his hand.
"Robert Sandford!" She called, afraid this time.
"What's that, you begging for mercy?" He asked, holding his hand to his ear, a mischievous grin on his face. Rochelle felt paralyzed as Robert placed the mirror fragment against her throat.
"Robert Sandford!" She screamed once again. "Sorry, I'm all out." He smirked, slowly sinking the glass shard in her throat. Blood shot up, and while he couldn't hear her choking on that same blood, he could feel the hot spray caressing his skin.
As she slowly died, her body turned into motes of light and flew into Robert's body.
"Shame, she died too quickly for a traitor. I'll make sure to reiterate once I go back to hell." As he talked to the void, amongst the cheering of his split personalities welcoming him back, a green fog spread in the apartment.
He barely breathed a whiff, and he started coughing violently. His eyes teared up, and his head went spinning. "So much for a demon constitution. I swear I'm tuning the shit out of this body once I get out of here." He thought, pushing away the green mist with a localized breeze.
As he tried to go over the effect of the poison gas, his eyes found his next challenge, a group of men in gas masks holding flamethrowers. "Oh, you got to be-"
They didn't hesitate and immediately sprayed fire on Robert. While Robert was indubitably bulletproof, he hadn't prepared any fire-related shields. He tore a hole right under him in a desperate move, falling to the unknown lower floor.
He saw the flames flying over his head and could feel the heat against his skin. A moment later, he landed on the floor, his kinetic invulnerability absorbing the fall for him. He was surrounded by soldiers, clearly ready for him to escape downstairs. "-e kidding me."
With a thought, all of their heads exploded in a pink mist, one by one. he might have an army of people preparing spells for him, but he was limited to one cast at a time per horn.
He walked out of the apartment, flipping the snipers off. One of them even shot him out of frustration, his bullet safely halting a cm from Robert. "When will you lea-" BOOM.
The bullet exploded in a sea of fire, burning Robert's face and ruining his clothes. He fell to the floor and rolled in panic before remembering he could create a localized vacuum, fire needed oxygen to burn, and it would be extinguished instantly in the void.
As the flames settled, Robert noticed he had been blinded in his left eye. "Arrr, this pirate is sad," he said, dragging himself to a corner. "Guys, let's go out with a bang."
He dropped his shield and started accumulating mana into the most powerful spell he had ever attempted. If half a second of accumulation was enough to burst a head, what could he do if he had a minute?
He probably didn't have a minute but whatever. He couldn't hear the army of boots approaching his position, but he knew they were coming.
When the first uniform crashed through the door, Robert clad himself in a protective cocoon and released the spell.
Ultra compressed air shone with a bright light as it exploded outwards. The first shockwave split the building in half and shot the upper half in the sky to fall across a hundred-meter radius.
The soldiers that had been close to the center of the explosion were vaporized, the ones a little further apart torn to ground meat. A live demonstration of being buried alive followed immediately after for the lucky ones that survived the explosion.
As for Robert? His cocoon shot in the sky like an escape pod and crashed a mile away. His body bounced on the asphalt like a skipping stone and finally came to rest by breaking through a furniture shop's window.
He was burned, shot, half-blind, deaf, glass shards had cut him all over his body, and his right arm had broken in the escape. But he was alive. His alter egos diverted the pain away from him and absorbed it instead.
"Being a hamburger is not so bad." he consoled himself, trying to get up. He quickly gave up and instead looked around. A man sanding a chair behind the counter looked at Robert in shock.
"Hey, listen here, Geppetto. Load me in whatever you use to get to work and bring me away from the city. If I survive, I'll grant you one wish. If you refuse or fail, I'll make you wish you looked like me, understood?" Robert spoke calmly, wondering how he sounded or even what the man answered.
But a second later, the man came and picked him up in a princess carry. "This would be such an inopportune moment to get a boner." He thought, could he even get a boner?