Scene shifts to Epicurus.
The insignia glowed faintly on his armor: Elite Guard, Rank 6, President's Personal Guard.
Epicurus
"Show me the sky, O God. Show me how to live."
Epicurus stared at Mori's corpse.
"He's dead."
Exhaling slowly, frustrated.
"How the hell am I supposed to make up for this?" Epicurus mumbled, trying to find the good in a bad situation.
We didn't have the technology to revive him. We could revive near death, but once you're gone, you're gone for good.
Epicurus lifted his gaze. In the distance, far but unmistakable, he spotted Osprey and four people assisting him.
Nine hundred meters away. A speck to most eyes, but not to him.
"I fear the storm."
There was nothing in this world more terrifying than the storm.
Not war.
Not monsters.
Not death.
The storm did not rage. It consumed.
Like a cannibal.
A man-eater.
It did not chase you. It simply moved, slow and patient, knowing everything in its path would become one with the storm.
A storm had no mercy.
It drowned cities without slowing.
It ripped the sky open like paper.
You could not reason with it. You could not beg it. You could not stop it.
All you could do was pray you weren't standing where it decided to pass.
This was what Epicurus was.
A disaster that walked. A force of nature shaped like a man.
Not angry.
Maybe cruel.
But simply inevitable.
And when he arrived, the only thing left to feel was the same ancient, instinctive terror humans had felt for thousands of years.
Vera and Kage brought only one medic each. A low-profile mission meant small numbers, and with Mori's area-of-effect abilities, bringing more bodies would only create more casualties. They thought they were being smart. Careful. Efficient.
They were wrong.
What they didn't expect was to look up and see the medics, their medics, the ones kneeling beside Osprey only moments ago…
…now nailed to the wall.
A massive trident pinned them there, each spike buried clean through their chests. Their bodies hung slack, feet dangling inches above the ground, blood dripping in a thin line to the floor.
The worst part wasn't the gore.
The worst part was the pose.
The trident didn't just pierce them, it crushed them together, folding their bodies unnaturally tight against each other.
Their blood mixed and ran down the wall in thick ropes, their limbs tangled in ways no living body could bend. They were pressed together grotesquely, bodies crushed against each other in a way that felt weird, like some twisted, sick joke. THey were so close both corpses were kissing.
And then we heard his voice, light, almost childish.
"Have you ever swallowed a lithium battery?" Epicurus asked softly, his voice low, almost curious. "It burns at over two thousand degrees Celsius."
He paused, looking at his perfect fingernails.
A cold pressure settled over the air, like gravity itself had thickened.
Vera's knees buckled. Her lips trembled, eyes darting but finding nothing to focus on. She knew who this was.
Everyone did. Everyone in the whole wide world fucking did.
She mumbled, "You killed them…."
Epicurus replied quickly. "I didn't kill anything. That's so edgy."
"I caught them."
"As you can see, the two corpses are stuck together like dogs in heat." Epicurus made a crude gesture with his fingers, crossing them as if there having lesbian sex. He smiled "It's like they're making love. We're going to leave them there."
For everyone to see, how perverted they are.
Beside her, Kage's breath hitched. He let out a sharp gasp, sounding like he just died. Snot leaked from his nose as he clutched his throat, trying to pull in air that wouldn't come.
"This is... that guy."
Both of them shook uncontrollably. The fear wasn't rational.
"The Usurper." The man who killed the King of Canada. Epicurus.
The fear was instinctive. Primal.
Their bodies reacted before their minds did. Vera's legs gave out completely. She collapsed to the ground, pissing herself immediately.
This was it.
The President's Elite Guard were not allowed to kill the Elite Guards of Mr. N's Liberation Army. This was out of fear of sparking a continental civil war.
But Vera and Kage were not Elite Guard.
They were seen as just "terrorists."
Lieutenants for the Elite Guard.
And their Elite Guard wasn't here to protect them.