As the sun is about to take its leave and the night is about to engulf the sky, Chaos walks into what looks like an abandoned bar. It is abandoned not because it is broken or deserted; it is abandoned because it feels like no civilian would ever go in there.
There is a heavy pressure surrounding the area of the bar—a sense of the end.
The door opens, and he walks in, bringing some of the last remaining sunlight inside. There are no artificial lights, no bulbs or candles; the room relies entirely on the natural light that is rapidly fading.
And that feeling of the end? Chaos senses it because he sees a room full of muscled brutes. They are the exact same type that accompanied Deus when he tried to raid Titan City. From their looks and massive builds, each of them is a hardened killer who would not hesitate for a single moment before taking a life.
Some of them are at the bar counter brooding, while others are sitting on the stairs with their drinks.
Chaos looks above; there is a mezzanine floor inside the bar. He looks around with his signature knowing smile as the men piercingly stare back at him.
Then, one man with only one eye—an empty hole residing where the other should be, likely gouged out during brutal combat—walks up to the mezzanine railing to look down at who has arrived. Chaos can see this man is roughly 6’6″, wearing a classic black tee tucked into black pants.
There is no eye patch to hide the missing eye, which means he does not consider it a loss, nor is he ashamed to display the imperfection of his body.
The one-eyed man stands at the edge, crosses his arms over his massive chest, and tells Chaos, “It’s a private place.”
Chaos says, “My friend, the way this world is going, there soon won’t be anything private anymore.”
The one-eyed man replies, “What the actual fuck are you talking about?”
Chaos says with a smile, “Still unaware, huh?”
Throughout this brief exchange, Chaos was standing near the doorway, but now he takes a step forward. The men sitting at the bar, whom Chaos has to cross, do not jump at him, but Chaos can clearly see the tightening of their muscles. They are ready, waiting for a single signal from the one-eyed man.
Chaos gives them a warm smile, raising his arms in the air and saying, “Relax, gentlemen. I hold no malice in my heart.”
He then walks past them to grab a stool, dragging it into the dead center of the room. Chaos does not try to go up the stairs; he simply places the stool in the middle of the floor, right where all the goons can see him and jump him. Without asking permission, he completes this entire action.
Every brute is glaring at him while keeping the one-eyed man in their periphery—a clear indicator of who the boss is. But the one-eyed man keeps staring at Chaos‘s antics without a single twitch of his own muscles.
Chaos finally sits down, crossing one leg over the other. He interlaces his fingers over his lap and says, “The world is collapsing, my friend, and we, the powerful ones, need to stop it from the fall.”
The one-eyed man says, “Last time I checked, it was standing very straight.”
Chaos shakes his head, looks back up, and says, “I want you to join me in my… let’s call it a Purge. Purging this gutter and making it a beautiful lake like it once was, as created by our Creator.” He lifts his arm and extends his hand, saying, “You can call me Chaos! I think if we are going to be working together, we should know each other’s names, right? So, what is yours? Or at least, what should I call you?”
The one-eyed man simply stares at him. He does not turn, nor does he move his arms or his body. He simply nods his head toward Chaos.
Immediately, one of his lackeys jumps from the mezzanine. He is not as massive as the boss, but still roughly six feet tall. He lands on his two feet on the ground floor and slowly starts to walk toward Chaos, who just sits there calmly.
Chaos does not get up. He simply unlaces his fingers, extends his hand toward that lackey, palms facing him, and golden flames slowly burn into Chaos‘s outstretched palm.
The beauty—or the terror—for the brutes is that fire is typically chaotic; it is engulfing, it is not focused, it is not linear. But the fire in Chaos‘s palm is not a normal fire, is it? First of all, it is golden, not a typical yellow, orange, or red. Secondly, the flame is entirely focused on his palm and is not spreading or raging. It is simply flickering in that exact same spot.
This unnatural sight freezes the brute in front of him, who is only a few steps away. The men at the bar counter, the ones sitting on the stairs, and even the others who were upstairs have come to the railing to witness why the collective bar is holding its breath. A sudden change in a group’s breathing might not be registered by an ordinary human, but it affects their presence immensely.
Chaos then brings his fingers close, like focusing the flame to a target. The flame gets entirely focused on that targeted opening and then—
SHUISHHH!
It is not a flamethrower; it is a fireball that launches toward the lackey.
The lackey’s freeze response snaps, and he effectively jumps to his right, thinking he dodged the fire. Chaos simply spreads his fingers again, and the fireball stops being composed, spreading like a usual fire would in mid-air. Some of the sparks fall onto the guy, while the rest of the fireball goes straight and hits the wall in front of Chaos.
The fire instantly grows the moment it touches his clothing and engulfs his entire left side.
The lackey starts to scream upon seeing this. “Ahhhh fuck! Shit! Do something, boss! Shit, shit, ahhhha hahhh!”
He jumps up and runs to find some water but suddenly stops. He stops and looks at himself. His left side is burning; it is literally on fire, but there is no burning sensation, no smell of burning flesh or clothing, no pain.
Everyone’s eyes widen witnessing this. Even the one-eyed man raises his eyebrow, but Chaos is simply sitting there with an amused smile about the whole theatrics of it all.
Then Chaos points his hand toward the brute again and starts to slowly close his fist by curling his fingers. Veins on Chaos‘s arm start getting visible, a sign that he is putting immense pressure to close his fist.
Soon, the fire actually rages on and covers the entire body of the lackey. The guy jumps out and moves around blindly; he is not feeling any burning, but the fire spreading around his body is an attack on his senses. And then, a noise.
Cra cra cruck Kha Thaat!
The lackey, who was looking scared, suddenly screams in pure agony.
The boss leans over the railing and barks, “WHAT? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING? IS IT BURNING? HEY, HELP HIM!”
The others run to him from the bar, from the stairs, from the mezzanine, taking water and throwing it at him, but nothing works. The pain and the screams do not stop. The water does not have any effect on the golden flames.
Slowly, his legs break and snap forward. Then his arms snap from the elbows, bending backward. Then the snap of his neck—
Thak—
and his head falls to his back. The sound of his screams stops since he is dead, but not the cracking. Slowly, his waist and hip joints snap and fold in backward, and the body falls onto the ground. His dead body keeps twisting and getting folded. Chaos is twitching his lips, the veins on the back of his hand getting even more visible; it is taking his genuine physical strength to close the fist.
Slowly, the fist completely closes. His smile is gone because of the pure pressure he needed to exert, and he breathes out a little.
Finally, the brutes look at their feet. It is not a dead body anymore. It is a human meatball, fisted and squeezed like a paper ball. The room goes deadly quiet as the cracking of bones and joints permanently stops.
The one-eyed man realizes the truth: the flame was never about burning. It acted like a liquid that wets the body to make the crushing of it into a meatball easier, the exact same way water breaks the rigidity of a piece of paper.
What lies in front of those other brutes is a medium-sized human ball. It is hardly round, but it is exactly like a crumpled paper ball. Everyone is terrified, but they cannot decide whether they are more scared of the screams they just heard or the visual that currently sits in front of them.
The one-eyed man finally snaps his head toward Chaos and says, “Kill this thing and show it what an actual purge looks like.”
The rest of the brutes finally turn to Chaos. There are twenty to twenty-five of them.
Outside of that bar, the sun has set, and the sky is now bloody.
Inside the bar, the darkness falls as there is no light source left. The human meatball, which is now slowly turning black with golden flames burning slowly around it, is glowing in the pitch black. It is the only source of light inside the bar.
Since it is a very small source of light, almost nothing can be perceived with the eyes, but there is a cracking noise from the floor. As everyone finally follows the sound, they see the flamed human ball suddenly lift off the floor, hovering in the air.
Suddenly, it flies and hits something—probably one of the brutes who was surrounding Chaos—but no one can confirm what it hit since it is so dark, so the group starts to scramble.
The one-eyed guy from upstairs can see the golden flame is moving really fast. As the flames come close to Chaos and go away from him, or revolve around him, it looks like Chaos is controlling the human fireball with his hands, like drawing in the air, but the one-eyed guy cannot say for sure.
Besides the sound of flesh hitting flesh—because the ball is hitting those two dozen guys, or the guys are bumping into each other as they try to run—there are the grunts of men throwing blind punches in the dark. Some are trying to fight, and those blind punches accidentally land on allies, generating muffled thuds. There is also a simultaneous noise of cracking and breaking, the exact same bone-crushing sounds from earlier. The mix of screams, grunts, and sobs is a terrifying assault on the one-eyed man’s ears.
Then suddenly, the flames vanish, and everything goes pin-drop silent again.
The one-eyed man’s voice rings out. “HEY! WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING? HEY, ANYONE? Boys?”
Chaos‘s voice is heard in the dark.
“Satan’s Gaze from the Purgatory!“
Suddenly, multiple golden flames start to flicker downstairs. The one-eyed man sees there are now almost twenty-six black human balls lying around Chaos, all with golden flame hues wrapped around them.
The fight ends in 4.5 minutes flat.
Chaos stands among all these human fireballs, his arms extended, palms up. That knowing smile has returned to his face.
It is only the one-eyed man and Chaos left.
The one-eyed man slowly takes the stairs, walks down, and stands in front of Chaos. The giant finally drops down, bends the knee in front of Chaos, and says, “Name’s Rogue….and where do we begin, boss?”
Chaos looks down at him as small black holes start to appear beneath and beside the human fireballs, slowly sucking the balls into it.
On the other side, it is morning in Titan City, and four days have passed since Jarrod, Friling, and Lesca fought Taglia.
The city is in full repair mode. Extra security—at least three layers—has been added to the West Side of Titan City so that no unauthorized personnel can enter. Locals and professionals are all working toward repairing the blocks involved in the skirmish. The streets are being filled, new glass windows are being put into the buildings, and some people have already started to paint the structures, while others are planting new trees on the sides of the street.
Jarrod finally wakes up in a different healthcare facility from where he was admitted before. The fight that took place three nights ago shook down much of the 3rd Block and some of the 2nd Block, so the top medical care facility, which is in the 2nd Block, might have received some damage, or maybe some key personnel died beforehand during the mercenary slaughter.
Jarrod opens his eyes and sees the ceiling. It is older and less glossy than the previous one. Slowly, as his senses arrive, he realizes what he felt last time when he was awake—that zinggg in his ear—is gone. He can hear the sounds of cars outside and the air circulation of the AC clearly.
So he sits up, almost jumping, looks around, and first asks Friling, who is sitting right beside him exactly like before, “Are you alright, Friling?”
Friling smiles, saying, “I am, Jarrod. Are you?”
Jarrod puts his hands around his ears, snapping his fingers to test the hearing. “My ear… why is it not buzzing? Isn’t it supposed to buzz?” he asks confusingly, but there is a lighthearted tone in his voice.
Friling sees Jarrod is being playful the exact same way he was before all of this.
This is the Jarrod that Friling met for the first time, the one he asked to stay. This lightness is a good sign; it means the trauma was only physical, not psychological. Somehow, Jarrod has managed to overcome or at least suppress it while he was unconscious.
Friling says, “I told you, Jarrod, I can heal any physical injury.”
Jarrod finally snaps, looking at Friling like he remembered something, and asks, “Where did that Coke Guy go?”
Friling stares at Jarrod‘s face, thinking, What a man. He almost died, and he calls the man who caused all of this and gave him that near-death experience with such casualness!
Then Friling remembers Jarrod does not actually know the name of the ‘Coke Guy’ and decides to be a little playful—God knows, after the pain, even Friling needs it. He says, “He felt guilty for losing his calm and went to talk to his therapist about how to stay composed.”
While Friling is bantering with Jarrod, Lesca is outside the facility. Even if she is not there to see Jarrod, she is there for her own reasons. She is standing in the small green grass garden in front of the facility under the glowing sunlight. The smell of flowers, grass, and soil gives a sense of calm that nothing else in this world can provide.
And just like the last time, she is munching on a packet of chips. It is like she loves hospital food. She looks up at the sky for a moment, muttering to herself.
“Don’t worry. He said he will come back!”
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