Pains And Duties Of A Father
Phesx Caolia looked at the flood of blood streaming down the Head's shoulder, with his resting on the wall and his mouth trying to move. Phesx felt 'the breath' in his body, but it was useless now. Perhaps he just wanted to live for a few more seconds. Then, with his comet pulled out of the bloodied, mangled shoulder, he said with a matching smile, “Sorry, I just couldn't resist the need to kill you faster.”
“It was…” Suddenly, the Head spoke with the frailest of voices. Phesx tilted his head. The Head continued, using the breath he could to keep on speaking. “You may… think you are all powerful… but learn this, kid… It wasn’t… a coincidence… Listen… We didn’t just find you-”
Swwllip. Phesx slowly slid the blade in the Head’s right eye, making him go stiff before dropping on the floor without any respect left in his body. Phesx broke his comet by hacking it into the wall directly and took it out of his body before standing, never flinching once. He looked down at the head before speaking again. This time, Phesx was impassive.
“There you have it. Is it all that it costs? I would’ve asked Emer to aid, had I know. Are lagjs this weak and fragile? Was it just that old fart, or is it because he actually comes from a hoog secret organization? Mn, had I know….” Phesx sighed at the end of his words. He shook his head before taking his leave.
He felt more tired, less active, and his energy leaving him. Thinking of injecting himself red syringes all over, Phesx decided to trust his instincts and primitive nature again. He walked directly back to his Pheli. It was a few minutes in his current pace, but he had to slowly recuperate all he possibly could to run away with her… with her body.
He went through roads of corpses, all caused by him. Some of which ran away at first and then found him and attempted to kill him, knowing more or less what has transpired. Others were those who only wanted to run away, but Phesx hunted them.
Nearly every road was filled with Artistas’ corpses, and the occasional Instructor, though most he simply killed in their study rooms or training areas. Phesx stomped on faces and bodies of all ages, with blood coming out of their bodies from one place or another. A few had unrecognizable features.
Step after step, Phesx returned to Pheli, his Pheli. She was practically the same as he left her. Phesx dropped everything he had. His weapons, the bion exoskeletal arm Pheli bought him, surely to gift it to him later, and his bions. All gone.
He carried Pheli’s body into his arms, like his princess, but more like a baby-sized one with only his right arm. Then, as he looked down, his chin against his collarbone, he walked… walked until the only elevator with its door instantly opening for them brought them outside.
Before stepping into the elevator, Phesx threw his letter into a small incinerating device, where it burned, along with Emer’s words before his death.
When he stepped into it, and after the doors closed, Phesx’s eyes, reddened and partially bloody, cried. His pupils and irises couldn’t be found anymore. Maybe they merged, maybe they broke apart and turned into something else. That something was what his eyes currently looked like.
There was still that grown, impenetrable black of his eyes, but they formed… ‘shapes’ in his white sclera now. The impenetrable black went from iris and pupil to form irregular pools in each eye, from 3 to 4.
When Layo first saw Phesx, he had 3 in his left eye and 4 in his right eye, but after she showed him some images, they changed to 3 on both sides.
Furthermore, he has mercury-like dull gray spots here and there, circling around his impenetrable black pools. There were 1 or 2 per eye, much smaller than the pools. They flickered in and out of existence.
Phesx cried on Pheli’s cryobag, becoming little pearls of frost. The elevator stopped, with Phesx welcoming some of the morning light. He stepped forth…
… Downstairs, at the security post. Layo looked at the elevator camera, with Phesx bringing the lifeless Pheli away, hurling into the big shadows in the morning’s early sunrise. She rested on a chair with tall armrests. When she saw them depart, her left hand holding a cylindrical object with a push button at its upper front was pushed by her index finger and thumb, using all the strength remaining in her body.
Her once creamy white skin became pure paleness. As she pressed the button, her lips opened and closed ever so little, dry and ruptured, as her very long chestnut hair swayed by a stray breeze. Her head rested atop the armrest, thought it looked more like it was hanging.
Layo’s fingertips slowly stopped pressing, losing strength and weight on the cylindrical device as the room began to tremble. Then, a beep sounded from all 4 sides of the room, but there was no response. Layo lied there, seconds after the beep… then, it activated.
KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM…!
“…” Phesx heard a rumbling below and behind him, to the west. He looked back, showing a face that hadn’t stopped crying, albeit silently and without expression. Some extra teardrops spilled before he thought of something and turned around on a roof to flee, ‘You used Pugor cubes to enhance it… Just where could you get that?’
Phesx continued fleeing. Despite the rage, the rage, the rage, and the rage inside his heart, he couldn’t feel anything from killing and dooming all of Riverlye, avenging Pheli. There was nothing for him.
. . .
Sargonde’s notorious building. Top floor, in the dispatch. 1 hour after Phesx escaped the building.
The room remained bloody and filled with corpses, but it wasn’t alone anymore. Police forces from PPO, PAB, and SPD, everything and everywhere, walked around it. In this hour, they’ve registered the whole building, finding the secretary’s corpse, the many unknown lagjs killed, already going through screening, but no vice president.
It’s been over an hour, but they couldn’t find anything, not even the slightest trace of her DNA. As for the broken window, it was too big to be from a human. It was also slightly durable, not bulletproof per se, but it could work something similar. As long as they weren’t ultramodern weaponry. Yet, there were no records of anyone ever falling, not clues and no footage.
The military checked the perimeter, while the national guard stationed at the building’s block and formed a blockade around it. The specialists were everywhere, working their job to search for the beloved beauty, the vice president that Lýmoca was supposed to talk about nonstop in today’s evening.
In the topmost floor, a few PPO police units were chatting in the room full of corpses. Someone had to do the watch, and that is the Police Post Office guys, who were at the bottom of the police taco chain.
However, unbeknownst to them, a person was waking up with a horrible headache. Lesly Rivera woke up remembering why she was in a disconnected fridge, where everything was dark, but her hands remembered where those stands and glass tiles were from, only after she realized she was in this fridge.
Her eyes widened. Lesly felt panicked, wanting to slap the shit out of the fridge to see if the entrance was above or below her, and roll over with all her brutal strength if she had to. But she hit her right elbow first before the door opened to her right.
“…” Lesly looked at the forensics and uniformed units before coming out stumbling about. A chilly breeze made her shiver, but they were too stunned to act and give her their coat. However, she didn’t forget her ‘objective’ and extended her right hand to a police unit. The officer took a semi-transparent gray sheet with words in it.
As the man read it, Lesly asked, hugging her arms, “Who is Gerardo Tellez?”
The man frowned, not having any idea of what the vice president was saying and kept reading. However, his eyes widened when he remembered he existed and called out to report Lesly’s whereabouts… and wellbeing!
Meanwhile, Lesly looked through the window. Her mentality was shaky. She didn’t dare look at the corpses and weapons everywhere, especially after seeing the majority were from the guards.
Beginning to remember last night, she thought of the unknown man who kept her safe after scaring the hell out of her with Iván’s head. She was compliant, alright. Although she was ready to bite her tongue off. She was trained for that, too.
Images of the lagj man destroying her dispatch and arranging for her safety, and his words of ‘keeping quiet and never coming out until 2 days passed’ rang in her head. She looked around, noticing why he worded it so exaggeratedly. Then, Lesly reminded herself of the note he gave her, and how that would help with the lagjs matter. She couldn’t believe it even now. She had to see if it was true, but the situation had become a red alarm, so everything was blocked from anywhere to anyone but a few select and the elements working in the task.
Last night, she could hear the distinctive fighting sounds, guns and explosions or noises she never heard before, it all went into her mind and shocked her, causing her body to fall asleep, fainting. While she also drank a lot, it was nothing after a little bit of training.
“Sigh…” Lesly exclaimed, feeling somewhat safe now. But now, she couldn’t do or know anything. Her fridge just got bigger. She looked at the city, it was a nice weather.
… But it wasn’t that easy and calm for the rest of the country. The world, even. It was a pleasant morning sunrise that came after a torrential rain in many parts of Lýmoca.
It was a sunny, warm morning the Lys welcomed before receiving news of their vice president being assassinated, presumably.
Many of the college students were fast to spread these news, no doubt. The entire country was in disorder. The social media interactions, flow, and foreign activity into Lýmocan communities was nefariously ginormous.
When it was time, and after receiving Lesly’s whereabouts and of her safety, Lýmoca’s president, Luis Heartez, talked to the public. However, something strange was that he didn’t ‘speak’ to the rest of the world about the situation. Instead, he… set a state and put a name and image to ‘their horror’.
First was a comment post in the social media, where he notified every Ly from a ‘mini’ and ‘personal’ press conference regarding this matter. When the time came, everyone took their phones out, turned their window crystal recorders on, or screens at home or work. They tuned in to truly know what was happening.
The social media of Lýmoca were all about one thing only after the president’s posted comment. Anyone who wasn’t even interested in those things were bombarded with videos explaining the president’s fault, or the president’s jealousy, wanting to take down his major contender for 1,026.
Others posted images ridiculing the president, showing his greed very animalistically and without a care given for the Lys’ minds and hearts, of how he stole from them. All of these became sensational. The people who usually only saw a few of these every few days, suddenly seeing thousands, and as many as hundreds of thousands, became intrigued, one way or another.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
But seeing too many also bored them. They could only wait before the president began. Thus, the press conference took place at 7 AM, the earliest the president has ever been for any matter of the country.
The live video came from the BLF, who were at the ready and specially invited by the ‘Defending Our Home’ political party at Proteros on the president’s behest. Thus, the pair of cameraman and reporter the president specifically wanted didn’t plan to go to Sargonde anymore and stayed in Proteros.
The streaming commenced with a straight out, flat angle. The president addressed the Lys, “Good morning, thank you everyone for coming. It’s been a few hours since the situation developed in Sargonde’s state capital city. First, I want to clarify some things. The incident has brought the dead of… of… of th- hundreds of people there, guards. They’ve fallen protecting the thousand of students there, practicing for the meeting that would have taken place today.”
“That is definitely being cancelled for safety reasons, and to respect the fallen.” Luis briefly added before continuing, “Secondly, the vice president, Lesly Rivera, is well and safe. Third, currently, we have identified the culprit… culprits for this situation. We have received information that is in accordance with other information we’ve received from the national guard, who has been investigating the apparitions of lagj secret organizations during the past months.”
“This is from an unknown source, but we've begun investigating the veracity of this information… This attempt, this insult to the country, will not be left unpunished, or unattended!” Luis raised his voice. It was only him in a room, but the notion still transmitted through screens. “Any lagj activity within Lýmoca shall be suspended.”
“Because, according to our data, the lagjs are comprised about 50% by Lys. It is unforgivable that these secret organizations do as they wish in our land, traitorous and giving their back to their history and blood! They will not be allowed to continue! We’ve already seen how much we have suffered from the organized crime for decades, even a hundred years! We won’t let that happen with lagjs!”
CHEEEERS! CLAAMOOOOR!
It wasn’t a large crowd in a plaza, or in a stadium, it was just the people reacting to the president’s words. Was he always like this? Did he suddenly grow balls? A brain? Whatever the case, without the president’s knowledge, just the social media alone was erupting with was easy to regard as the first speech against secret organizations threatening their government. In the world, if not in human history.
Some activity was caught by the BLF, which they showed to Luis. He smiled, so surprised that he almost thought he bought bots and just didn’t remember. But his late wife would’ve strangled him to love-death if he had, so he would never.
“Now, the person who has been identified… responsible for this ‘operation’,” Luis continued. He wouldn’t stop just now. “Is someone still a student. He was previously in the Ojazul school and is named Ph… Phesx… Ph- Phesx Caolia!”
The president paused there, for a moment. He continued informing the country, though, and that pause became a little inconvenience. They were indeed shocking answers… a young student no less…
***
4 hours after Phesx Caolia left the Riverlye ghostly HQ. Túacan, state capital city, central.
Phesx wore a tattered, old teacher’s jacket, walking towards a ginormous residence. It was perhaps a citadel in the past, because it wasn’t just beautiful. It was well guarded and vast. Phesx, however, lowered his head as he walked to its main gates with a slow pace.
Step… step… step…
Phesx heard footsteps in front of him. It was already noon, but… but the cold was here. Warmth was away, and the day was sunny, but it was getting colder and colder. It was nice.
Being a month and a half from the next year, few elderlies would like to go out even during the afternoon, let alone evening. Maybe that was the reason why a man with a stick walked behind the main gates.
Phesx looked up, at the same time, the man looked at him. He was well bidding farewell to his middle ages and becoming an elder, but he already seemed afflicted and without much spirit.
However, when the man looked at Phesx, his eyes became stuck on the ‘young man’s’ face, as if he couldn’t move them away no matter what. It looked forced.
The strangeness of Phesx’s eyes didn’t matter to him, it was as if it doesn’t even exist. Phesx returned the stare… he didn’t know how to feel, so he remained quiet. The man had orange hair and was a bit stout, with a gray, trimmed beard.
Eventually, the man looked at the cryobag in his hands. Phesx felt a tremor in his heart before looking down at it as well. The cold was here, he felt an even colder sensation invade his only functional arm. But Pheli was gone.
Beep. The gates sounded before they cleanly opened. Phesx looked up at the man whose eyes were guarded against him. Phesx paid that no mind and stepped into the residence before stopping. He looked ahead, not letting the man know he knew tears were reddening his eyes.
“Her door?” Phesx’s voice was broken, straight out flat. Soft, still… but fully broken.
“Main door, 3 hallways onwards… 2 right, 1 left… it has her name in it.” The man responded, choking. Phesx silently walked forward. The man didn’t notice. When he turned around to guide Phesx, the latter was gone and already walking into the main building.
The man took his phone out and manually commanded it to send a voice message to everyone within the residence and nearby. “There’s a guest here… don’t move, act, or say anything. Just let him pass… He might not harm us. Letting him inside… I know you will not feel safe after you know who it is, but let me… let me see first. We can report him later… yes, later… That… that will give him… time.”
Phesx entered the building. There were majestic stairs leading to the only doors opposite to the entrance. Phesx walked them forth. A butler, looking like a guard, saw him and almost stopped him. The family head’s voice message and Phesx’s… strange sensation from his aura prevented him from acting.
Phesx continued onwards, with the butlers and maids watching, reporting his whereabouts, before staring at his back. That was all they could do. His jacket couldn’t hide limp his arm’s limpness. His hand hung from the sleeve without moving an inch, barely swaying with his steps.
His eyes were narrowed to a near close. Few could distinguish he had strange eyes. Either way, Phesx met many girls and young women after walking 3 hallways onwards. They stopped at their doors, looking at him silently, with interest… before showing a horror-stricken face.
Phesx went right and left, finally finding Pheli’s bedroom. His mind formed an image, wondering if it was just as she told him. But now, it would only be used by herself; one last time. When Phesx opened the door, without moving an inch, finally lifting his chin, he found the answer.
‘It’s just as you described. Girly and organized… peaceful and silent.’ Phesx looked around with longing before closing his eyes. A few more tears spilling out wouldn’t hurt.
Phesx looked down at her face, lowering its sealed gap to free her face for a moment. Sitting on the edge of her bed, the first girl’s room he ever entered, Phesx bent over to press his forehead onto hers. He suddenly felt like lying beside her… and just die.
He was tired, tired enough to kill a thousand strong soldiers, or more. But not less. That was tired enough, right? He could leave now, right?
But… he just couldn’t. His very own insides deprived him of such a beautiful door. Such embrace.
Phesx sealed the gap before rising to his feet with low shoulders, and with the last tears his poor, weakened, near bloodless body could exert as he backed away. He whispered, with no voice or sound, but he moved his lips as he thought.
‘I… can’t stop… I may already be dead, with you forever… But I can’t stop. Lye, I will bleed until I join you.’ Phesx turned around afterwards. He found her father there, just looking at them like a father watching her daughter frolic with her first love across the distance. Unsure if to ruin that boy’s life or give the world up to protect her.
“She, uh… Pheli, she… She could never be ‘caged’, keh heh. The world was meant for her, all of it. I could have done everything for her, but I had to prohibit it. Prohibit it to her eyes, eehh. That was… too much.” The man said, looking at Phesx’s eyes as he mentioned this. He was hurt and confused, but understood. Yet, he couldn’t do anything now.
“…” Phesx looked at the man and said nothing. He lowered his eyes to ponder before leaving with soft steps.
Everyone looked at his back, at his 1-armed figure. It looked lonely, but how lonely?
One cannot comprehend what they haven’t experienced. One cannot comprehend what surpasses their experience.
“Sigh. I’ll call him… directly.” The man took his phone out as he closed his daughter’s door. For him, it felt like he at least… managed to send her off to the heavens. Meanwhile, in his phone, he delivered a phone video to that whom the Forzt are only in good ties with for now.
. . .
A week later.
The whole world reacted to Lýmoca. It had been such an abrupt, sudden, and groundbreaking news. How could one even imagine an actual assassination on one of the highest profiles in a country was carried about? It was… truly too much.
That was the world, of which were all foreign to Lýmoca. Needless to say, the president’s opposition struck like they were meant for this moment. After a few days, anyone could tell they were rejoicing in the president’s misfortune… but also of Lýmoca.
Another ‘accident’ almost happened just 4 short years after the last one?
The entire country went out to the streets to patrol. Hell, even the criminals were scared. Every little part of the nation was on the lookout. Who dares touch their beloved vice president? Who dares?!
Regardless, Phesx was seen a few times in the first 3 days. It couldn’t be avoided. Unfortunately, what little his body healed allowed him to think clearly and not be so dull all the time anymore.
After that, though, Phesx was never seen again. Even when the police, national guard, and military and civilians appeared in hundreds when he was spotted, he still escaped under their patriotic noses. Meanwhile, the Riverlye bases were discovered and cleaned up one by one. The HQ was the first to fall.
At this moment, though. Somewhere in Proteros, Phesx walked the streets of a distant town near Proteros’ center. Although the capital was ‘just there’, this town was mostly shitty and basically of the lowest incomes one might think for a town.
Phesx wore another jacket, pants, and long-sleeved shirt he stole from a poor apartment just a couple blocks away. He was calmly walking with his head hanging low. This was a rare sight in Lýmoca, such a drug addict usually gets targeted by the organized crime or is brutalized by some degenerates. Few get help. But at least when they did, it wasn’t just a government program for the ‘founders’ to make money.
A young woman, beautiful enough to draw stares without having a body to match the pleasant aesthetics, looked at him with disgust and detachment from the other street as Phesx walked to the crossroad. Phesx stopped when he heard a red light switch from yellow or green.
After waiting for a bit, just then, a person with a hoodie almost struck Phesx’s right shoulder, if he hadn’t moved at the last moment. The person looked back briefly before focusing on the young woman. Phesx was about to step forth when this happened. He stopped; waiting, watching.
The person was, as expected, a thief. He easily overpowered the young women with a punch to the stomach before grabbing her purse and running away. The young woman knelt and screamed, but nobody seemed to be near, or care.
“Somebody heeeelp me! I’m hurt! Aaah! My bag, someone, please, my bag!” The young woman stood up to yell, as nobody heard her. She looked at Phesx but didn’t put any hopes on him.
Yet, Phesx ignored the young woman but stared at the thief who ran past the street and headed off in the short distance… Phesx waited to see where he went. When he saw the thief run into a wide alley, he lowered his body and pushed forth, exploding with speed.
“Kyaaaah!” The young woman only felt a brief breeze before being pushed the hell to the side off the street. Meanwhile, Phesx’s eyes glimmered. They saw to insanity as he could hunt today. He flashed past the street and into the alley. The thief didn’t even hear him despite how loud he was. But Phesx was too fast, even more than he remembered himself, although he could definitely not control it. It still felt amazing.
“Ah-?”
Phesx kicked the thief’s head from the side, turning him into a flying human to smack against the rear wall of a house. The thief’s scream didn’t last when he went unconscious, struck on his nape and upper back after the kick, but the purse flew up into the air.
Phesx grabbed the purse’s straps before flinging it away so it wouldn’t get dirty with what he was about to do. Phesx calmly walked to the thief and rested his right sole on the back of his head. With a simple movement, he stomped.
Stomp, stomp, stomp. Kick!
After destroying the head, Phesx went for the spine, crushing it into two and pulverizing a third of it. Then, he went for the pelvis, breaking it apart as the corpse’s legs dangled into the air a couple of twitches before immediately going limp.
At last, Phesx kicked it away, letting its flesh, destroyed bones, and exposed organs randomly drop on the ground with haste and into the air as the thief rolled multiple times, really fast, until everything fell on the ground.
“Haff, haff…” Phesx felt his whole being in excitement, when suddenly…
Whooosh…
He barely heard a wind pass by, when a figure in white garments appeared before him, falling from above. Other figures did the same, but they were soundless and wore similar garments, or at least that could tell Phesx, who only looked at their legs and heard the same weight on their steps. Because his sight was also blurry, and getting even blurrier. They surrounded him, and the one in front seemed like their leader.
…
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This is the end of Volume 2 — Game's On.