Empires | Arc 1 | Chapter 5 | A Date with Fate

It is the cafe again. Well what is left anyways!

The front wall and the window are blown wide, and so are the building’s upper floors and roof that was in front of the cafe. Chaos bowed and just left. Taglia is sitting alone in the coffee shop; most of the people who witnessed the whole thing have either fled, are dead, or are too traumatized to even talk about it. A few moments later, Taglia stops staring at the chair in front of him where Chaos was sitting, and looks down. The Coke that was offered to him is still there.

He stares at it for a long time and says, “Powerful cup!” and starts sucking the drink through the straw as the agonizing screams of dozens continue.

In the hospital where Jarrod is admitted, he is adamant about leaving toward the meteor site, but the doctors and security are trying to stop him from leaving.

The nurses are saying, “Sir, you are not fully recovered yet, you are supposed to be under observation for the next 24 hours.”

Jarrod, refusing to let it happen, uses Push toward the floor and jumps up. The security cannot hold onto him as he goes up in the air and sprints off the 4th floor where his room was!

Friling is using his Raphael’s Wings to fly and reach the site faster, carrying Lesca, who is on his lap cradled like a baby! Since their car got busted and the traffic makes it impossible to reach there faster by foot, using Friling‘s Heat was the only way.

As they fly toward there, Friling, looking forward, asks, “What do you think caused that?”

Lesca, looking at the front too, says, “I think the meteor did!” with a smirk.

Friling says, a little impatient, “I am serious, Lesca!”

Lesca snaps back, saying, “How the fuck would I know? I was sitting beside you when it happened, remember?!”

Friling, realizing it’s pointless, increases his speed.

As the sun reaches its highest point in the sky, suggesting its high noon, Jarrod‘s group arrives.

Jarrod is first, using his Push toward the ground and Pull toward the building walls to increase speed. He lands on the site and he sees dust, debris, broken concrete, glass, and dead bodies peaking through the rubble. Some are helping the ones who are still alive under the concrete; the authorities are arriving.

As Jarrod is looking around trying to make sense of it, Friling drops just a few feet behind him, dropping Lesca gently, and asks Jarrod, “Did you find the cause?”

Jarrod cannot hear him. He goes toward the nearby fallen wall, as there is a guy trapped under it and four people trying to lift the wall. Jarrod uses Push onto that broken wall. Since it’s a piece of the wall, he can move it, but it is still hard nonetheless, Jarrod has to grunt to finally lift the wall as the other civilians get the man out. Friling, seeing all this, sighs, understanding that asking Jarrod questions now is worthless.

Lesca simply looks from left to right, then right to left, pokes Friling in the arm, and points toward the inside of the cafe, saying with an unreadable tone, “Maybe you should ask it to that chill guy inside the cafe.”

Jarrod by now has saved three more people already from under the debris and finally turns, as his eyes fall inside the cafe too!

It’s Taglia, still sucking on his Coke, not looking at them but looking a little bored perhaps. Jarrod and Friling walk up to him, with Lesca three steps behind them.

Jarrod says, “Hey, you alright? You saw who did this?”

Taglia turns toward them with dead eyes, slowly raises an eyebrow, and says, “He just left,” quietly—in Taglia‘s head, he is imaging a Chibi Chaos bowing and walking away— Taglia is using a casual tone like he is talking about an impatient friend who was tired of waiting, and not someone who simply by moving his hands summoned meteors out of thin air.

Jarrod asks again, “You saw him? What did he look like?”

Friling takes a step forward, putting a hand on Jarrod‘s shoulder, non-verbally telling him to hold on the questions.

In Friling‘s mind, he is thinking that this Coke-drinking guy must be in shock, as in shock many of us tend to do stupid things. But also, something is bugging Friling: how is he not dusty or shaking? Drinking Coke as a trauma response is one thing, but not trembling even a little is a different thing altogether.

So Friling asks, “How are you not hurt? You look… fine!”

Finally, Taglia turns toward them fully and says, deadpan, pointing his left thumb toward the back side of the counter like stating a fact, “I was in the bathroom. That’s in the back, so…!” while using his right hand to jerk the cup a little so that the ice melts properly with the drink.

Jarrod says, “So you came back, saw all this, and then decided to have a drink?”

Friling intercepts, saying, “Then how did you know the guy who did it… just left?”

Taglia says with a shrug of his shoulders, “When I was zipping my pants and came out, I saw him leaving, but I already paid for the drink and…” He looks around, his tone shifting a little, becoming or trying very hard to be concerned, saying, “I am keeping a watch so if he comes back I can warn others.”

Jarrod is confused, while Lesca, standing behind the two, stares at Taglia‘s face. She analyzes his posture is slightly bent not upright, suggesting he was sitting there for some time; his figure-four sitting position suggests an unaffected vibe; and most importantly, the way his coat is on the ground, dusted like the floor itself. Her mind reaches a conclusive word: Fascinating! This guy has been sitting here all along. If he was not present during the explosion, the lower part of his coat would have been clean.

While she does not know the details, she can clearly grasp something that her brother and his do-gooder best friend cannot. So she simply smirks and starts to look around the area again.

Taglia goes back to sucking his Coke. Friling stares at him for a moment, then, hearing someone needs help, leaves to help out in the rescue and stabilizing the survivors. A little later, Jarrod leaves too, as someone needs help with another heavy rubble. Lesca simply hops off the cafe from where the window was supposed to be, goes to a corner of the cafe walls, and leans in. While she is not helping like the others, she takes a position as a watcher, much like what Taglia claimed to be, but her focus is on Taglia.

There is something about him that does not add up in her book. She starts thinking, running variables in her head. For example: If he is so strong, why did he lie? Is he the culprit or associated with the person who did this?! Why is he so… aloof! It’s almost like seeing herself in the mirror, but more… aloof.

While she is deep in her thoughts, Taglia finishes his Coke and gets up, about to leave—ironically enough, from the main door, not the hole he made like an hour ago.

Jarrod, who is still helping but finely tuned to the guy sitting a few meters behind him inside the cafe, turns to him immediately and asks, “Hey, where are you going? Didn’t you say you are keeping watch? Besides, you are not medically checked yet!”

Taglia turns, his right hand in his pocket toward Jarrod, and tries to sound trembling, saying, “I think I am traumatized. I am going to my therapist. I think the sugar rush just went down, my hands are shaking.”

Jarrod looks baffled as he stares at Taglia. Friling is too busy helping. Lesca, leaning onto the walls, shows an almost imperceptible smirk!

As Taglia walks toward the door and holds the handle to open it, a slight tremor spreads through the entire structure, which is missing one of its parts. So the upper ceiling starts to crack, with small parts of it already falling along with dust, and the main structure is about to fall on Taglia.

Taglia simply looks up like he is figuring out what the hell is happening, or maybe he is simply thinking, “Fucking hell, what now?!”

Jarrod‘s internal danger bells scream as he himself screams toward Taglia, saying, “Hey, look out!” and uses Pull toward Taglia to pull him out of the building and to the empty space on the street where he is standing.

This is when the grave mistake occurs.

Jarrod‘s Push/Pull Heat works based off relative mass, as demonstrated during his battle with the intruders. That means if the opponent is lighter, then they get pushed back or pulled in toward Jarrod. But if the opponent is heavier than Jarrod, then Jarrod will get pushed back or pulled in toward them instead!

So when Jarrod uses Pull toward Taglia, instead of pulling Taglia out, Jarrod gets pulled toward Taglia.

And it is not a slow pull; Jarrod violently gets yanked toward Taglia the moment he raises both his arms, palms toward Taglia.

Almost like he is being drawn toward him like one magnet to another, or a rubber band snapping together after being stretched for long.

His feet don’t just drag; they literally hover off the ground as the Pull effect activates, while Taglia is simply looking up toward the crack of the ceiling. Even before Jarrod can take another breath, he realizes he is standing where Taglia is supposed to be, and Taglia is nowhere to be found.

While Jarrod is trying to save Taglia, the moment one of the small dust particles from the ceiling is about to hit Taglia‘s coat, he simply vanishes.

Maybe it is teleportation, or maybe he went supersonic, impossible for any eye to follow. Unlike Leon’s Weapons of Doom Heat: Arrow, which could be observed by seeing where he was standing, as his speed generates a reaction like small wind currents, Taglia‘s does none of those things; he simply ceases to exist.

Even Lesca stops leaning back on the wall and stands upright to see what is happening. Her mind is trying to process: did he go supersonic on the spot, but where is the sonic boom? But it is not teleportation either, that would leave a distortion in the 3D space he was occupying in the physical world where he was standing.

The current situation is Taglia is gone, and Jarrod ends up in his spot as the whole ceiling falls onto him. Everyone turns and runs toward him. Nothing can be seen at first from the sheer amount of shockwave of the collapse and dust in the air. But as the dust settles, the rescuers see Jarrod is on his one knee, almost like a vowing knight position.

Both his legs are trembling like crazy, literally vibrating. He is raising both his hands, palms up toward the ceiling, using Push with all his strength, so much that one of his nostril has started to leak blood, just to stop the entire upper structure crushing him, he is holding the entire structure only 3 to 5 feet above his head.

It is his sheer luck that the cafe was one story. But with that entire weight on Jarrod‘s, it’s still touch and go! Everyone runs toward him to help him; others get into their cranes and bulldozers to use the vehicles to stabilize the structure so Jarrod can get out.

While everyone has gathered around the cafe, Friling is looking desperate, trying to find a way, but there is none. He does not have the physical strength to hold back the entire structure, not to mention if he goes in, the shockwave can collapse the whole thing even faster.

And Lesca is not in her place. When Taglia disappeared, Lesca saw the whole thing with a squinted eye. Then she runs toward the front door, completely ignoring what is going on with Jarrod, and then to the back of the cafe to check where he went. But Taglia is nowhere to be found!

Inside the cafe, Jarrod is getting crushed. As he is now on both his knees, the structure is even less than 3 feet until it falls on him. His arms are literally shaking, veins popping out at the back of his palms, and the blood has started to leak from his other nostril too!

Even in this moment, Jarrod is not thinking he made a mistake jumping headfirst without thinking. I mean, what else could he have done? A man was about to die, an innocent man! While this is going on in his head, in the real world everyone is screaming or hesitating to make a move because the ceiling is not budging, rather coming down, and Jarrod‘s stamina is rapidly decreasing. Even Friling is worthless here!

But then something happens!

As Jarrod is about to accept his fate, as there is no way out—he cannot move, he cannot push—he just looks up toward the ceiling, not closing his eyes like anyone else would, accepting death. But not Jarrod. He stares back at the cause of his death. Everyone else is looking at the ceiling, then looking down at Jarrod, and finally at each other.

Because all of their minds are in a frozen loop, they miss a shadowy figure the size of an average human, but bony, and there is some sort of liquid mass around him. It jumps into the debris from the back of the cafe, a dark shadow of sorts for most ordinary eyes. It lands in the dead center, a few inches from where Jarrod is kneeling, raises its hands to hold the structure, and kicks Jarrod on the back. Despite appearing bony, the sheer strength of kicking away a grown, ripped man a few meters proves its strength. Jarrod literally flies out of the cafe.

The moment the Push effect is lifted, the whole force falls onto this entity, and in 0.07 seconds, the shadow gets crushed as the whole building falls onto it.

Everyone’s eyes go wide at what happened, and then they run toward Jarrod to check on him. Friling, standing there, first followed the entity’s kick and then where Jarrod fell. As people run toward Jarrod, Friling keeps looking toward the rubble. Seconds later, he sees from the fallen ceiling cracks some gooey, liquid-like substance—almost looks like old blood, black and red or maroon, with something mixed up in it… bone dust?!—moving toward the back of the cafe.

Its movements are almost like how a snake moves, or water moves when spilled on an uneven floor, but the movement is deliberate, like it’s being called back!

Friling keeps on staring until it is out of sight. He is not afraid, he is not shocked, he is not even surprised. He looks… somber! He finally runs toward Jarrod to give him a hand. Jarrod takes his hand, gets up wiping the blood from his nose, and says, “Thank you!”

One of the rescue team members asks, “What happened? Who was that?”

Jarrod looks at him, then back to where the ceiling has fallen, and says, “Can’t say for sure… he… it was…” He turns to Friling, saying, “I only saw something covered in blood maybe!”

Lesca casually strolls up to them , still looking as pristine as ever, and says, “What an odd man that was!”

Jarrod asks, still a little zoned, “Hahh?”

Lesca says, “The Coke guy!”

Friling stares at Lesca, and asks “Where did you go?”

Lesca casually says, “A guy just vanished out of thin air. I was curious.”

Jarrod says, finally coming to his senses, “Yeah, he didn’t make any sense.”

Lesca looks at Jarrod and turns back, walking toward the street, saying, “Both of you don’t make any sense!”