by Vee Bosse
Jayce wasn’t fazed in the slightest, and he poised his Nullifying Sword as he was only a few feet away from the one he was desperate to kill. “My blade cannot be stopped by anything, even diamond. Don’t you understand by now, my sword nullifies matter itself! Die, and allow me to take my place on top of this disgusting planet!!” It was a fierce strike, and Jayce’s reformed sword pierced through Christian’s titanium shell like it was made of glass. “Now, your elemental ability is nullified! Prepare to die!” Jayce smiled with a look of accomplishment, as he turned his head back towards the target that he had just soared past. “My blade hit its mark. So, let’s see the look on your face, now that you are dying on this acid drenched landscape of yours.”
For some reason, the acid rain had indeed stopped amongst the eerie red sky. Jayce knew that he had made a huge tactical mistake as he looked down to see that the titanium shell that Christian had entombed himself in was as empty as could be. Titanium shards had scattered all across the landscape, as Jayce looked around in a panic to see where his opponent had been hiding.
“The closer you are to me, the more powerful my next technique will be...so thank you for playing into my strategy! When you saw me surround myself in that titanium shell, I had leapt backwards to cast my mirage technique into the surrounding air. The shell was real, but I was a mirage, thanks to my ability to manipulate water droplets in the atmosphere.”
“You...clever little shit,“ Jayce snarled, extremely annoyed at the thought of being toyed with.
“Clever? Maybe just tired of fighting. I’m ending this with my next attack.” Jayce gritted his teeth in anger at Christian’s taunt.
“Enough! You...ack!! Gah,” Jayce’s eyes became disturbed as felt a horrifyingly painful sensation.
“Nullification of everything? You just breathed in about a few million acid- laced shards of microscopic diamonds.” Jayce’s eyes grew wide in panic, as he desperately clung to his sword in an attempt to nullify the gargantuan amounts of miniscule, unnoticeable blades that had now entered his body. He had even begun absorbing the damage that they were doing to him physically, but it was so massive that he had a hard time keeping up with it.
“Although I am able to feel that you have nullified an impressive amount of my attack, the acidic, piercing diamonds have already tattered your lungs to shit. Keep trying, I have billions more to send inside of you.”
Jayce was now gasping for oxygen, all while violently coughing up blood. He tried to curse his opponent, to verbally slam him into the corner that he thought it should have been easy to get him in. “What...the hell?! The All-Cures!?” Christian was shocked to the point of utter disbelief. Indeed, Jayce dropped his sword next to him, suddenly taking out the three remaining bottles of Dr. Jassa Nava’s All-Cures.
“We...shit! Her medical bag! We left it behind after we defeated Dylan!” Jayce swigged one of the three bottles down in a rush as he was now completely healed, and ready to fight once again.
“Oh wow...holy shit...you almost got me there, Christian Rivers. A fearsome attack, but luckily, I had Keirkess take away his Essence of Vision earlier this morning so that it was incredibly easy for him to lurch among you all, and sneak these three bottles out from under your noses.”
Jayce couldn’t have been more relieved as the bottles of All-Cure had become extremely rare to find in recent decades. He knew in his heart that the day would probably never come that someone would have been able to harm him, but hearing that they had brought Jassa’s medical bag with them to the White House meant that he could steal it for himself.
“Christian, this is going to be a true ending for you, and your friends. I will kill you...and then kill those other four that Westin has probably revived by now. We have already seen how powerless they are against me, so repeating that chain of events will be no problem at all. Let’s begin!!!” Christian gritted his teeth in annoyance, witnessing Jayce suddenly drink the two other bottles of All-Cures; he let it sit in his mouth without swallowing it, making sure that the damage from Christian’s incredible attack would be progressively healed as he charged towards him.
Jayce had also made sure not to breathe in as he leapt at his opponent with superhuman speed, yet Christian was able to maintain a steady focus as he kept his reformed Diamond Sword pointed in Jayce’s direction. “You coward...lowlife thief! Get ready!!” Christian made good on his intentions, as the billions of microscopic shards seemingly gathered around the tip of his sword; they were collectively shot at Jayce with a fury.
The shards tore into the would-be emperor of the world, as Jayce gulped the All-Cure down in small increments, reeling from the terrible pain that came with being ripped to shreds on thousands of simultaneous occasions. Jayce had to push forward at all costs: Christian was now just standing in front of him, ripe for the slaying.
Just as he had gulped the last of the All-Cure down, “Yes!! It’s over!!” Jayce had exclaimed in ecstatic jubilation, as his blade had mauled through Christian as though he were a paper doll. “Now, NULLIFY! Your elemental abilities...your life...and this world!! They are OVER!!!”
“Wow...you sure like to talk a lot.” Jayce looked back in disbelief, realizing that there was now nothing where he had just swung his sword. “For a supposed genius, you sure forget things really easily. Remember?? I can create illusions for very short periods of time, just long enough to make my opponent swing at absolutely nothing. You’re out of All-Cure...good-bye, Jayce Wolfgain.”
Jayce was speechless as he looked to his side, watching as Christian pointed his sword at him that was connected with the acid-laced diamonds. “You...you planned everything! The dispersion of your diamond fortress into the atmosphere, and that acid rain that must have mixed with the diamond shards...you somehow knew that there was a limit to my nullification abilities! Christian Rivers, you...YOU FUCKING BASTARD!!!”
Jayce had completely lost his mind, leaping at Christian with all of his speed and strength, as his sword was poised to strike his opponent down before the diamonds could rip him to pieces. “Enough.” Christian was fierce and calculated as he felt the need to humiliate his opponent as retribution for all the friends that they had lost. Jayce’s arm was suddenly severed in his charge forward as it limply fell to the ground, clutching the sword as though a dead man had drawn his last breath with it in his hands.
“Oh...oh.” Jayce stopped his forward assault, stopping to stare at his nub of a shoulder that had begun to spew massive amounts of blood with each heartbeat. “Christian...Rivers,” he began to feel woozy, yet he managed to suddenly leap forward at his prey once more.
“Stop.” Christian had seen enough. Just as Jayce was a couple of feet in front of him, he sent the acid shards through both of his legs. Jayce fell face-first on the acid-charred dirt, breathing heavily as he realized that he only had one limb left. His left arm was the only thing that he could use to push himself on his back, as his blood loss quickly became sobering.
“You’re still holding those bottles of empty All-Cure in your hand. You might as well relax a bit in your last moments...drop them.” Jayce blankly stared into the sky that was still filled with ominous crimson clouds. “Jassa gave those to Haynes, just before she died. You desecrated...defiled them.” There was no mercy from a fading Jayce Wolfgain, as his final hand was ruthlessly severed from his arm. “That’s better.”
Christian knew that their ultimate opponent would now be dead in a matter of seconds as he and his friends had done the impossible. The threats had all been subdued: Eastern Latitude elites, as well as the Western Latitude elites were gone for good. More importantly, Jayce Wolfgain and his entire Shadow Project would no longer be a threat to the world.
“Christian, what kind of life...do you think that you five can possibly lead? The people of the East and West will not relent in ending your lives...what a miserable fucking life that you have created now.” With his dying breaths, Jayce had to know Christian’s answer. He had managed to gaze upon the one who had mass
acred him with his fading eyes, as a few tears of regret began to make their way down his pale face.
Christian looked ahead to see that Winkle, Andrea, and Haynes had been fully restored from Westin’s ability to restore life. They approached on the horizon as Christian gave Jayce his answer.
“We will be around, to guide this entire planet into a new world. Let them throw their hate at us...we didn’t save them all for their gratitude. We did it because we are rebels.”
Jayce gazed at him with wonder as he could find no more words. His eyes slowly closed, and the battle was over.
“Christian!! You did it!!” Winkle ran up to the one who had taken their biggest opponent down, leaping into his arms for a massive embrace.
“It took a little while, but I was able to rejuvenate their life forces just in time. I even saved all of Winkle’s dragons,” Westin said, as Haynes and Andrea gazed at the horrific mess of limbs and blood that had been Jayce Wolfgain.
“You got crazy...I see.” Haynes said, allowing a relieved smile to show on his face.
“Andrea, I guess you can smoke it now.” Westin had prompted a satisfied Andrea to take the large, classic cigar out of her back pocket. She held it out towards Christian who nodded at her in relieved silence, planting his reformed sword into the dirt while he subliminally ignited the tip of Dre’s victory smoke.
“Thanks.”
Winkle suddenly noticed something, “Hey, look! Something is happening with Jayce’s sword!” They all looked behind them to see that the Sapphire Sword of Nullification had shattered into pieces. Out from its ashes had risen several orbs of different colors that floated in front of the rebels as they stared in awe.
“I can feel it...these are our abilities that Jayce nullified and sealed inside of his sword. I think we just...reach out, and grab them?” Haynes said, as they followed his lead. Indeed, upon holding the orbs in the palms of their hands, they had all immediately felt their abilities return to them in full force.
All except for one orb that had an ominous red/black glow about it. It hovered in from of Westin, as he gazed at it with woe. “Westin, your death ability...are you going to take it back?” Christian asked in earnest. Westin simply closed his eyes, declaring his new intentions. “This white streak in my hair now represents that I only have the ability to heal and save lives. To take this horrible ability back when I am finally done with it? I know what I will do.”
Without any further words, Westin opened his two normal eyes, which began to glow a brilliant white. He focused on the sight of the black orb of death, willing it to disappear from existence. It was an understandable choice, and one that they all completely empathized with. The death orb slowly faded away; its terrible power had now been destroyed by Westin’s ultimate power of life.
“Well, I should probably report back to my family...my sis would kill me if I didn’t,” Christian admitted, thankful beyond words that the days of marking their friends’ gravestones had ended.
“Hey, you guys!!” The five turned around, suddenly excited to see Melas and Reylina running full speed their way. “You guys, my goodness, you took them all down?!”
Reylina suddenly shrieked in horror at the sight of Jayce’s remains. Melas crinkled his face in horror as well, embracing his tall wife in his arms for comfort. “Look you guys, I’m glad that you got the toughest jobs done, but the people in this continent are beginning to leave their refugee camps. We also saw that the Eastern Latitude is moving past the deaths of their top elites very well. Things will probably go back to the way they were, on both ends.”
Melas’ words of reason made the five rebels think, and they looked at each other in a state of sudden thought. “If you want to escape from the citizens and such that might be fixing to give ye all trouble, you can join us on the high oceans if you’d like. It’s the least we can do, given everything that you lot have done for us...and because we are distraught over all of our friends that didn’t make it.”
Christian suddenly stepped forward, while the others turned their gazes towards him. “No, we won’t run. Like I told Jayce before he died, it’s time to lose the isolation that has become the way this world operates. We are going to move into a new world, together. We can be redeemed, and so can everyone else in this world...no matter how bloody all of this got along the way.”
The rebels and their sea sailing friends had known at that point that they would not let themselves become subdued by the world that they had reclaimed from the hands of tyrannical authorities. From that point on, they would:
COMPLETE THE RESISTANCE.
Thank you to my friends and family that provided amazing inspiration for the characters in this manga-style novel.
Epilogue
This all started in 2008. The location can be called TPJCC. For those who I met at this place...thank you. Without your encouragement, this story would not exist today.
To those of you seeking more information about who Vee Bosse is, perhaps you should know that he is a pre-med student somewhere in the United States.
I am referring to myself in the third person instead of the first. How macabre.
Never stop rebelling against those who would choose to stand above you, rather than beside you.
