Super & Real
Chapter Fourteen
Massive armaments of soldiers kept a massive area of the Valley of Megiddo clear. The Lord and his servant stood waiting. Scores of supers, too powerful for the military to keep out, stood stationed around their Lord and waited for the all-important moment. The air seemed to hold its breath and the very Earth seemed to rest on the edge of its seat. The morning sun beat down. Despite the heat, a chill passed through all present. All manner of believers and non-believers alike stood in a gigantic circle around the inner circle where the final battle would take place. People stood shoulder to shoulder and back to back, some holding signs, all perfectly silent. No noise, save for the rustle of the wind moving the stray leaf about, would move through the land. The Lord hovered several feet above the ground, his eyes watching as he turned in every direction, facing both the crowd and seeing off into the distance, and the sight of him awed all present into submission.
A portal opened. Jennifer, clad in a custom set of armor, touched down, forming the tip of a triangle pointed towards the enemy, about fifteen meters away from her enemy. The others landed behind her, each watching intently for the first sign of action. Jericho had a set of armor on and attuned each specific power he believed would give him a fighting chance against this fake Jesus. Only the non-combatants sat the appearance out.
The tense silence exploded when the group of enemy supers vanished from their position, each propelled into action by their respective power. Jennifer ducked to one side and planted her foot in the neck of one super, his body a mass of muscle covered in stone. The shot launched him into the waiting arms of Annie, who planted him in the ground with a forearm smash. Jericho moved his head to the right, and a piece of metal shot by at relativistic speeds. He stretched out his hand, with a dozen powers in tandem, and pulled. The telekinetic saw his body fly forward. Edward leapt off Jericho’s back, and in one lightning motion, drew his katana and slashed. The curve of light that shot out moved forward and engulfed the foe, and his dust fell on the soil. Two supers dashed forward at impossible speeds and started trading blows with Jennifer. She had to activate both speed powers to match them, but dodged each punch and kick, and caught the first guy with a gut punch, and when he bent over, drove her knee into his forehead. His head snapped back at an impossible angle before the momentum of the kick launched him skyward. The other’s fist sailed past her, and she drove a right elbow into his temple, separating his head from his torso. Jericho raised both palms upward, and a group of eight projectile launching supers hovered high. He clenched both fists, and they compacted into a sphere the size of a basketball before a fireball shot from his palm and vaporized it. Jennifer made short work of the remaining enemies at super speed.
“Enough games!” Jennifer shouted.
The Lord turned to his servant. “It seems the inevitable has come,” He said to Jack, forming a protective sphere around him.
“My Lord!” Jack shouted, safe within his bubble. “This shall be a glorious beginning to your eternal kingdom!”
The Lord hovered to within five meters of his foes. He waved his arms outward, and a golden light overtook him, and his robes and sandals were replaced by golden armor, reminiscent of a thousand paintings of the archangel Michael. “The first time I came,” He spoke, taking his enemies in his sight, one at a time, “I came as a shepherd, a sacrifice, to rid the world of sin, at our Father’s request.” He closed his eyes and blinked away a lamentation. “It saddens me to have to return as a conqueror, but the forces of Satan have risen, and the final victory is at hand. I shall complete my Father’s work upon this Earth, and the result shall be eternal paradise!”
“You talk too much!” Jennifer shouted, throwing a punch at his face.
Before it connected, an invisible force caught her and launched her into the ground, kicking up dirt. Annie came up from the Lord’s left side, smashing a fist into his side. The force bent him inward, but he merely thrust his hand forth and a wave of invisible power blasted her back, forming a trough where a small rocky hill stood. Jericho stuck his arms out and clasped his hands together. A perfectly black sphere formed around the Lord, and at least a few dozen explosions could be heard from inside. An instant later, the investor got lifted off the ground, and hundreds of handless punches smacked into his body. He jerked back and forth as his armor cracked and splintered from being used as a punching bag. The last two shots caught him under the chin, causing blood to spurt from his mouth, and then a mighty battering ram of a shot blasted him into the ground. The sphere vanished, revealing a Lord whose hair had been tussled and his face marred by ash, but otherwise unharmed. Ed hadn’t even gotten his sword removed before he saw dirt.
“Is this the extent of Satan’s might against his Lord?” He asked. As his foes pulled out of the ground and stood up, their armor falling away, revealing their bodysuits underneath, blood oozing from cuts and skin swollen from abrasions, he shook his head, eyes closed. “Saddening.” He opened his eyes and landed.
Before a thousandth of a second had passed, all were on him at once. Punches bashed against his face, feet against his armor. Ed’s sword slashed at his exposed neck and face. He stuck his arms out at his sides, catching Jennifer and Annie, launching them like toys strewn about. Ed saw a hand wave in front of his face, and he flew face first into solid stone, propelled a good three meters.
“You FUCKER!” Jericho shouted, peppering the fake with every projectile attack he had. Everything from lightning, to fire, to gravity bullets, to metal and rock, and beyond, merely ricocheted off. The lord raised a palm at his side, and the man did a three-sixty flip before faceplanting on stone.
“I honestly expected at least a battle worthy of the Son of Man,” The Lord spoke, raising a finger and blasting Jericho back first into stone hard enough to crack entire boulders. “It really is sad how much hope the Deceiver puts in his false messiahs, given that you fools expected to seriously oppose your Father in Heaven.” He lifted a finger and the lot of them hovered and were set down safely on their feet. “I am giving you a warning. You have but one option: bow your knee to your Lord and receive eternal life. For no one gets to the Kingdom of Heaven but through me.”
“Fuck you!” Ed shouted. An invisible force pelted him in the gut. He bent over and spurted the contents of his stomach onto the ground.
“Say again?” The Lord asked.
Ed spat on the ground. “You know what?” he shouted. “I’m a Christian. My friend Jennifer might not believe, but I do. My mama, you know what she did? She spent my whole childhood teaching me about Jesus.”
The Lord listened with compassion in his eyes. “Continue,” He spoke.
“She spent years teaching me about the Lord,” he explained. “We read the Bible together. She always said Jesus was all about love and understanding.” His eyes turned red hot and his face donned a furious anger. “You, sir, are not the Lord!”
A sad melancholy expression passed over the Lord’s eyes. “It saddens me to hear that,” He spoke. “Do you know why?” He breathed out. “Because it means you have chosen, here and now, to die forever. The fate that awaits you is the fires of hell. It means you will never see your dear mother again.”
“I bet,” Ed shouted. He swung his blade, but the curved beam of energy harmlessly reflected off the invisible field surrounding the Lord. Jennifer shot forward and swung a kick upward. The Lord curved his hand, and she focused her energy powers into her eyes and saw the telekinetic blast heading her way and shot a burst of ball lightning out just as she got launched backward. The blast exploded in front of the Lord’s face. He wasn’t hit by it directly, but the intense flash of light and explosion of thunder centimeters in front of his face caused him to blink briefly.
Annie buried her fist hard into his armor as he showed the slightest of distractions. The force of the blow curved him upward and shattered his golden armor. His eyes shot open and a massive battering ram blow caught her in the chest and launched her into the ground. Jennifer appeared an instant later and caused hot plasma to erupt on the Lord’s back, and he spun around as chunks of his wrecked armor fell away, revealing his robes beneath. Without a word, he quenched the superheated attack, just in time for a blade slash to crash energy into the remaining pieces of armor on his waist and legs. With a shout, he stuck his arms out at each side, and a spherical wall of power smacked everyone away from him.
Jennifer pushed through the pain and grabbed ahold of the Lord’s shoulders, spinning him around and attempting a headbutt. His eyes lit up and she found herself hurtling into stone.
“No!”
The Lord’s head shot around. “JACK!” He shouted. One of the enemy, the younger brother of Jericho, Luther Torvalds, had appeared out of a portal, inside Jack’s protective bubble, and latched both hands onto Jack Hurst. The Lord waved his hand and Luther’s head snapped back as he flew skyward.
“My Lor…AAAHH!” Jack clenched his head and shrieked in agony. His eyes open as wide as possible, a look of sheer horror painted all over him, he cried out into the Heavens. He touched Jack’s head.
The Lord’s eyes went wide. “Jack!” He implored. “What is this!”
He could not see what was happening inside Jack’s mind. He couldn’t see.
The Lord outstretched his hand. Luther appeared before him, blood leaking from his nose from the whiplash caused by the attack. His eyes rolled about and he sputtered blood from his mouth. A quick smack by the Lord’s left hand and Luther was restored to health. “YOU!” He shouted. “Tell me at once what you have done!”
A grin appeared on Luther’s face. “Why, my Lord,” he sarcastically stated, “don’t you know? I thought you were God.”
An angry sneer appeared on the Lord’s face. A finger extended, and a glow overcame the lower half of Luther Torvalds. His lower extremities lit up with the fire of a thousand suns. An agonized shout like no other released itself from the depths of his lungs. Never had the young man experienced such unbridled pain. A moment later, it ended, and he was restored. “You shall not tempt the Lord,” He replied to Luther, his eyes stern. “I will ask you but one more time, what have you done to my servant?”
“See for yourself!” Luther shouted, his eyes suddenly blinking and then opening as wide as possible.
“What? I…”
The Lord’s statement cut off mid-breath. A child looking up from his toy truck appeared in His vision. The boy looked upward just as a massive wall of red light lit up the sky outside his house. A moment later, it overtook him. His fingers and toes evaporated, nerve endings lighting up with every pain impulse at once. It arrived at the brain just in time to cause unimaginable suffering, which followed by the eyeballs exploding, the nose melting followed by the rest of the face, and finally, parts one normally expects not to hurt firing every sense of misery at once. This lasted an eternity in the few seconds it took to occur, before the boy felt nothing at all, ever again. This macabre demonstration, down to the slightest sensation, repeated itself hundreds of millions of times, inside the mind of the Lord, as he got to experience firsthand, how every life he had taken had died.
The Lord screamed and shouted, attempting to banish the experiences wracking his brain. He saw sights and experienced sensations utterly beyond compare in their horror. Worst of all, his every attempt to rid himself of what he felt ended in futility. He fell to one knee as his mind lit up with six or seven such experiences at once. His servant, Jack Hurst, writhed on the ground and sputtered as his body began to seize from the horrible sensory input. The Lord reached out to touch him and free him from his agony, but not only did that not happen, but it proved impossible to even free himself.
Jennifer and Annie took positions as more than two dozen supers, crosses burnt into their foreheads, took to the sky with various powers, seeing their Lord in peril. Various fists traded between the two and the twenty-four different enemies ganging up on them at once. Fire covered fists and feet covered in spiky metal began to impact them from five different directions. The two combatants defended themselves, with fists impacting skulls and ribcages, and several different bone cracking noises could be heard. However, with the crazed expressions on faces, it became apparent these people proved more than willing to martyr themselves.
A fist sailed towards Jennifer’s bloodied face, but a hand caught the wrist. The assailant, a young man with vaguely Germanic features, looked up. A muscle-bound woman hauled the would-be martyr up above the crowd and smashed an elbow into the man’s forehead. His neck gave way at an impossible angle and his body went limp. The attackers stopped and looked up as the new arrival tossed her victim aside.
“None of you are real Christians!” the woman shouted, in Georgian-accented English. She then dove into the group, scattering them.
“Thanks!” Jennifer said. She immediately assumed fighting position again, after wiping blood from her forehead.
“We’re here to show this false messiah what real Christians are like!” A man shouted, popping in. Behind him, a good hundred or so supers appeared. In response to this, the Lord’s defenders regrouped, and a fresh batch came in from beyond the barricade, in equal numbers to the newly arrived defenders.
“Go stop the fake Jesus!” the lady said, grabbing martyrs in each hand. “We’ll fight these!”
Jennifer and her friends left as the two large groups of supers began to skirmish with each other. Jericho had grabbed his brother and the two of them circled around the two main enemies, ready to attack.
The Lord struggled to his feet. A war still raged inside his mind, but he began to reassert his command over his body. Divine power continued to rage through his veins. He shot forth like a rocket, swinging for Jennifer, she barely dodged, his fist clipping part of her cheek off, which regenerated in a moment. Opportunistically, she kneed him in the gut as hard as she could while bent at the correct angle to do so, then elbowed him in the back of the head from his other side. He stumbled into a power-infused sword strike across his gut. A moment later, his elbow caught Ed in the chest, sending him sprawling backward. Annie smashed a jab into the same place the sword struck. That’s when Jennifer saw it.
There wasn’t a cut, with blood, in the traditional sense. Where the two hits had struck, a crack appeared horizontally across his abdomen, with glowing white light emerging from it. It sealed up a moment later. In the fraction of a second after the attack, the look that exchanged between the three friends said that they all saw.
All finesse went out the window. The Lord gave up dodging and the four belligerents began trading blows, each counting on their durability to hold out. After absorbing a sword slash, the Lord drove a flat palm into Ed’s gut, causing a spurt of blood to spray forward into his path. He then planted the sole of his right foot hard into Annie’s left knee, bending the leg backward at an impossible angle, causing the giant goddess to shout in agony, before righting her leg and setting it to heal. He swiped a burning right hand across Jennifer’s face, melting a hole in her left cheek, which began regenerating quickly.
Ed drove his sword’s tip like an ice pick into a spot on the Lord’s chest, and Annie planted her enormous fist into the same spot. Jennifer’s fingers shot forward but hit flesh as the crack sealed up a heartbeat too late. Jericho arrived on the scene and shot twenty different types of projectile attacks into the Lord’s upper torso. His robes melted off and his skin charred in spots, but ultimately, he held. He smacked a glowing palm into Ed’s chest and the man collapsed and sputtered as an inhumanly bright light shot out of him.
“You had surprises, servants of Satan,” The Lord said, regaining his composure, “but ultimately, you…”
Three fists, one glowing with different powers, smashed into his face, and propelled him into soil. A beam of light erupted from the hole in the ground and burned straight through Jericho. “SHIT!” he sputtered, as he looked left and right, then vanished into mid-air. A right palm smacked into Jennifer, and a light pulsed through her, and she felt several organs rupture. A gush of blood and a piece of lung tissue came out her mouth as she rocketed backward into the ground. The Lord erupted from the ground and stuck out two left index fingers. Annie’ right arm bones exploded at several places. She let out a cry of pain like no other. He stuck out his right index fingers and her left arm repeated. Finally he stuck both hands out and her leg bones pulverized and she collapsed into a mass of suffering.
The Lord spat blood from his mouth. “YOU DO! NOT! INTERRUPT THE LORD!” He screamed at the top of his lungs. He looked over, at his servant, Jack Hurst, regaining his composure. He saw Luther appearing and attempting an attack. “AND YOU!”
Luther felt invisible hands drag him over to the feet of the Lord. “YOU DARE! HARM MY SERVANT!” The Lord’s unholy screech echoed for miles. A look of anger not remotely human painted a horrifying picture on His face. He stuck out his hand.
Every bone in Luther’s body exploded into dust all at once. Every organ ruptured. His brain went for seizure and passing out, but He did not allow the man the luxury. The sound that came out of Luther Torvalds should never have been heard by human ears. An instant later, the Lord healed him, only to perform the same excruciating torture a second time. And then, he did it a third. As his allies watched, struggling to their feet as their regenerations attempted to heal the damage, a sense of dread and horror washed over them as they felt like children, unable to crawl to their friend’s aid. “You leave…! Him alone!” Jennifer sputtered, blood shooting forth from her mouth.
The Lord turned from Luther, leaving him partially healed, but unable to move from the torture. He stepped slowly, deliberately, towards Jennifer. She looked up at him and would never be able to forget what she saw. She saw a look of anger and hatred no human face should have been able to make. It was the look of pure evil personified. If a normal human made such a face, they would die from anger alone. “YOU!” he shrieked, his voice carrying the weight of every act of anger ever performed. “YOUR FATE IS THE WORST OF HELL!”
He stuck out a finger and tapped her on the forehead.
Her body went limp. Her brain could no longer send commands to flesh. It found itself wrapped up in a suffering beyond description. It would prove impossible for any being, regardless of intellect or capacity for description, to put to words what suffering she endured. To say she was dead would be a misnomer. Her brain had images and stimuli, and her flesh had metabolism. But her experiences were beyond experience.
If it were possible to describe her suffering, the description would not fit within reality.
No infinity reached high enough to adequately accommodate her pain.
Somewhere, a billion light years away, a thousand different attacks collected on a single point on the Lord’s abdomen. A massive crack shot from one of his sides to the other. A massive light shone outward.
All at once, Jennifer found herself in command of her flesh again. Her hands moved of their own accord, it seemed. They wedged between the two parts of the crack, and her arms pulled with otherworldly strength in opposite directions. Glasslike edges of the Lord’s flesh cut into her palms as the crack began to seal, spraying her blood all over.
She took to the sky, pushing upward like a Saturn rocket, drawing power from other realities into her body and burning them like coal to fuel her strength in as many ways as possible. The Lord smacked burning palms into her face, burning off huge sections of her hair and scalp, leaving behind blackened scars on her head. She gritted her teeth and pulled. As she yanked with everything she had, the Lord stuck out a finger and a javelin of light impaled her right hip. She screamed and sprayed a bloody mist across His face as she dared not let go.
“You will not prevail!” Jack Hurst shouted. “No one can defeat the Lord!”
Jericho appeared out of a portal, a hole in his battle uniform where he’d been skewered by a beam of light, now healed. He stuck his right arm through the bubble surrounding Jack, scarring his flesh as it ate through his clothes and into his skin. His palm landed on Jack’s left shoulder, by the neck, and a surge of power shot into the preacher, burning him internally. He screeched in pain and collapsed.
The Lord shot a look over, taking a break in his defensive assault on Jennifer. His vision distorted as a wave of a feeling he’d never felt before surged through him. He saw the bubble surrounding Jack warp, then pop.
The crack, almost sealed before, gave a loud crack as the blood coating Jennifer like spilled paint continued to pour from her wrecked hands. His mouth went wide. “WHAT?” he shouted.
“rrrrRRRAAAAGGHHHHH!”
The sky lit up like the flash of a nuclear explosion a moment after Jennifer’s inhuman screech. Most held their arms over their eyes. Four people saw it first.
The Lord had been bisected at the abdomen.
Jack collapsed onto his butt, lying there. Finally, he pushed himself up to a seated position. His eyes saucer-wide and his mouth as open as can be.
Annie spat up blood as her body healed enough to stand. Ed lie there, in agony but alive. Luther felt a feeling of pure joy wash over him as he stared up, utterly unable to even turn his head. Only Jericho stood tall, his burnt arm slowly healing as it sizzled with smoke coming off.
Jennifer let gravity take her and hit the ground in a puff of dirt.
As the Lord’s two halves fell, and the light dimmed to normal daylight, at the openings where his body had been broken, light continued to emerge. Globs of liquid-like light emerged, congealed into a hard, crystalline shape, like quartz, then evaporated into dust, and finally, nothingness. His lower half hit rock and shattered like an ice sculpture. All color, texture, and features indicative of the human form faded to white light as the crystals grew from where pools of glowing liquid formed. The mass of crystals grew upward a few feet, then began to turn to glowing dust, and then faded.
The upper half hit hard dirt. The Lord’s upper torso landed on the left side, shattering the arm, and leaving a cobweb-like pattern of cracks up the torso. He landed ten meters from his servant. Chunks of his torso lost all features, and fell off, crystal chunks of pure white. They hit the soil, and swiftly faded from reality. The Lord’s brown hair turned to glassy strands at the tips and began crumbling away. He looked at his cracked right arm, losing its features as it cracked, and began to pull himself forward. The stump of his left arm moved weakly as he crawled.
“Jack…” he sputtered, white light shining from cracks in his mouth as he spoke.
Jack looked in horror. At first, his limbs refused the signal coming from his brain, as his body mutinied against the reality taking place in front of him. Finally, he forced his body to react, and he clamored up. He ran at full speed.
“I…” The Lord looked up as his servant, scared like never before, knelt and cradled the body of his Lord. “I don’t understand, Jack…” he said, sputtering.
“M…M…” words failed Jack Hurst as he lifted the body into his arms, as one would a wounded child. “I…I…”
“Please!” The Lord begged, as unknown quantities of fear and horror emerged from places in his mind He hadn’t known could exist. “Jack! Please! Help me!”
“Um…Uh…” Jack’s mind raced at a billion miles per hour, but in a hundred billion different directions. He could not commit his brain to rational reality. “The…I…”
“Jack!” The Lord shouted, his voice warping and warbling. “I…I can’t…! It hurts, Jack!” His face began to lose color. “How can this be…How…Jack…tell…”
“My Lord!” Jack shouted, his mind latching onto the only thought possible. Tears streamed out of his eyes and onto the rapidly deteriorating body in his arms.
“The…How…” The Lord’s gaze turned skyward. “My father…doesn’t answer me…”
Finally, His eyes went wide. “Am I not…?”
He went silent and still.
A moment later, his body turned to dust in Jack’s arms.
The preacher stared at the vanishing dust where his Lord had been. He blinked once with mouth agape.
Then, he let out a scream of pain and loss not even a war widow could equal.
A dozen news cameras and several helicopter cameras caught the moment. All the world’s eyes were fixed on the scene.
Jennifer stood up, shaking wooziness out of her mind. From head to toe, she stood covered in her own blood. Wounds were healing, but her body bore the remnants of all-out war. “Water,” she cried.
A super landed by her, and she gestured. He sprayed her from head to toe, washing as much blood and grime off her as possible. Next, he produced a bubble of water, which she stuck her face into and drank.
She limped towards Jack, the hole in her hip having healed, but still bothering her. A super stripped one of their beaten enemies of her clothes and tossed it to Jennifer, who changed in a flash. She stood a meter from Jack, still kneeling by an empty spot where not even the dust remained. He looked up.
She gave him a look that disarmed him.
“How…!”
She collared him, hoisted him to inches off the ground, and held her other arm at striking position. “What?” she shouted.
“How could you defeat the Lord!” he spat out, the last of his will in his voice.
She barked a laugh and dropped him.
He stared confused. The strange response, like a splash of cold water on a sleeping person, drove his confusion away, and sobered him. “What’s so funny?” he said, heart still racing.
She laughed harder. He continued to stare as her laugh reached exuberant highs.
He clenched his teeth. “WHAT’S SO GODDAMN FUNNY!”
She blinked several times. “You honestly don’t get it,” she said, shaking her head.
“That wasn’t the Lord,” Annie said, reaching their position.
Jack found his sense of will and grabbed for it. “You’re lying,” he said.
“Nope,” Jericho said, stumbling over, still somewhat dizzy. “Feel that twinge in the back of your head?” He tapped Jack on the forehead, and the man got reminded of his own memories. “I don’t know how you gaslit yourself into forgetting about it, but everyone who has a power has one.”
Tears returned to Jack’s eyes, but everyone could see he was lying. “You’re…you’re lying!” he shouted.
“Then you won’t be able to summon anything else,” Jennifer said. Everyone shot her a look. “Jericho, if he does anything funny, explode him.”
Jericho stood behind the man and placed hands on his neck. “Gladly,” he said.
Jack would prove these fools wrong. There was no twinge in the…his heart fell in his chest.
He felt it.
Reaching, he pictured some harmless silly cartoon character from his childhood. He pulled the trigger.
“Hey!” the cartoon rabbit said, popping into being in front of them. “I’m late!”
“No!” Jack shouted, disabling the power and banishing the cartoon character.
He thought of a superhero his kids watched on those Japanese cartoons and activated his power.
“We’re going to have a fight!” the Asiatic character said, adopting a fighting pose.
“NO!” His legs went to give way, but Jericho pulled him up.
He turned on his power once more, and another cartoon character from his childhood appeared.
“You’ll never be able to…!”
“NOOOOOO!” Jack silenced the creature at once by turning it off. He collapsed to his knees again, hands clutching his face.
Jericho folded his arms and waited as the preacher wept into his hands. After a long moment, he emerged, face a picture of horrified realization.
“Oh God…” he muttered, his voice barely audible, as dawning terror captured him. “I killed them.” He blinked. “I killed them!” He let out another scream. “All those people! I KILLED THEM! OH MY GOOOOOOOOD!”
Annie looked between Jericho and Jennifer, but when she looked at Jack, she was the only one who saw it.
“JENNIFER!” she shouted.
Jennifer, at super speed, saw the moment expand into an eternity. Jack was going to try biting through his tongue.
Jack slammed his teeth shut, only for an impossibly hard hand to wedge itself into his mouth. “NO!” Jennifer shouted. “You’re not going to martyr yourself!” Annie reached down and hauled the man upward like picking up a kid’s doll.
“You’re going to face humanity’s justice,” she said.
Three portals opened, and John stepped out, with Raymond, Davis, and Sam. John snapped a nasty, red glowing collar around Jack’s neck.
Davis and his superior poked futuristic-looking pistols into the man’s back.
“Reverend Jack Hurst,” Davis Wilson said, leaning into the man, “for crimes against humanity, you’re under arrest.”