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False Stays False

“I know you’re here, you jackass...”

Jeremy was not evil.

‘I can feel that brain of yours...

He just got really pissed when people got in his way. It happened to him all the time. He didn’t like evil, and he didn’t embrace it.

“Of all the minds I’ve seen, I don’t think I’ve seen anything like the treasure trove you’ve got.”

And Jeremy wasn’t some deluded moron, either. He could tell good from evil easily. What really got under his skin were the ones who thought they were working ‘for the greater good,’ the ones who brushed aside the concept that they were brutal murderers and vile butchers.

‘Pity I’m gonna have to rip it apart. It’s not like you’re giving me a choice, but even if you did ...

And The Chronomancer was an evil son of a bitch.

“It’s killing time, you bastard. C’mere...”

He was gonna kill him. He was gonna give it his damnedest try, by God. He didn’t care if the Chronomancer wanted to stop ‘the Cataclysm’. Jeremy didn’t frigging care. He wouldn’t be around by then. He’d be off, hopping around some other dimension, hopefully with full use of the power granted to the former owner of his body, from the Well.

But, for now, he was going to stay in Khazan. He liked Khazan. Though he had gotten his ass kicked a couple of times, he enjoyed it there. Already people had slain themselves because they knew he was coming. It wasn’t something to be proud of, really. He wasn’t even sure what caused it, and it sure as hell wasn’t him who did it. But still, it had been a statement alluding to what might happen. It probably hadn’t been called a false prophecy for nothing. And he very well couldn’t stay in Khazan if some senile man with a time machine got the chance to meld with Time itself.

He wasn’t sure how the Chronomancer planned to do it, or if he even knew how to do it, but it told Jeremy that this was one crazy old man. A crazy old man that needed to be stopped. A crazy old man that could very well accomplish what his crazy old mind had set itself to.

There he stood, right in the middle of the alley, with his back turned. He looked to be tightening his gloves.

‘Shithead... Jeremy grimaced, pulled his gun out of his jacket, and leveled it right at the base of the Chronomancer’s neck.

And then Jeremy saw as the Chonomancer’s field of vision flashed white, and blood burst forth from his neck in a spray. Jeremy found that odd, considering he hadn’t shot him yet.

And then the Chronomancer disappeared. Not even in the blink of an eye. Just gone.

‘Crap!’ Jeremy’s lips tightened over his gritted teeth. The voices in his head, another gift left to him from his body’s previous owner, screamed. They raged, they cried, they demanded he stop. They told him he was in over his head. That he didn’t fully understand what this man would do to him. That the words ‘Swiss cheese’ and ‘brain’ should really mean something to him at this point in time. That he was going to die.

‘Sorry boys, but I’ve got a spine...

That when those voices really began to sound afraid.

Jeremy felt the Chronomancer flit in and out the fringes of his mind. He had to stop screwing around with the timestream and hold still eventually...

And he did. Right behind Jeremy.

“Aw, sh...”

He didn’t get the entire word off. He didn’t even get a chance to turn around. The Chronomancer’s hand grasped around the back of his neck, and time proceeded to explode right in front of his very being.

Jeremy looked up to the smogged heavens to give one last scream of silence, a bloodcurdling one if he had the ability to make a sound. He saw a field of bodies in between the bulkheads of a darkened hallway of some spacecraft, and watched as thousands of insects skittered down to rip the bodies apart, consuming even the ones that were still alive. He felt hot winds blow in his hair, felt his right hand run through the reeds of a wheatfield, felt his left hand get chopped up, knuckle by knuckle, to the wrist, and felt his legs burn and incinerate, like he was standing in a lava pit. He tasted salt water, like his lungs were supposed to be filling with the blood of the oceans. He smelled sweet perfumes waft through his nose. He heard the laughter of children joyously bounding around in a park as their parents watched on, having their own little picnic.

The Chronomancer let go of Jeremy’s neck. He keeled over and clutched his stomach upon release. It was still coming. He tried to shut his eyes when he saw directly into the blinding light of a star coming into being. He tried to scream when he felt the fires of a nuclear inferno disintegrate the flesh and muscle off his bones. He tried to cover his ears as he heard the terrifying rending sounds of living tissue and bone being ripped apart by something monstrous, with the lost and pitiful cries of children in between, presumably in fear of becoming dessert. He tried not to breath as he smelled and tasted fifteen-thousand different smells and tastes tear through his nostrils and mouth, all of them just as displeasing as the next. And he couldn’t hear the voices in his head screaming in abject terror.

And if he could’ve heard them, they would all be telling Jeremy how much of an idiot he was in between their pathetic cries of horror.

He couldn’t remember if it had been seconds, minutes, or hours that passed after the real world slowly swirled back to his eyes again. He had no perception of how time worked anymore. He couldn’t even think straight. So he didn’t really mind the taste of fresh vomit and blood playing across his tongue. Or that the Chronomancer had helped him back to his feet, only to throw him against a wall, and let him slide down.

“Hmph. You’re not a normal human being, but you’re not too bright either.”

His vision cleared enough to watch the Chronomancer slowly look over his face. The sound he heard could be only compared to static, but his hearing was slowly being returned to him. His skin wasn’t even tingling. He felt dead.

“Did you have something to prove, boy? I’d rather not waste my time on researching a petty someone with a reputation to maintain.”

F--- you...” Somehow Jeremy managed to get it out.

The Chronomancer frowned more deeply than he had before. “...I’ll ignore that transgression. I could feel you prying into places you should’ve never been looking. Who are you to think you can stop my mission?”

Jeremy opened his mouth, and spit in his face.

The Chronomancer disappeared and reappeared in an instant, out of the way of Jeremy’s vile insult. He leaned in closer, hovering dangerously close to Jeremy’s face. “I’ll ask you, who do you...” He stopped as Jeremy raised his gun and tried to press it against a forehead that wasn’t there.

The Chronomancer stood a few feet away from him, glaring silently. “You’re quite stubborn, for someone who’s seen how futile his efforts will end up to be.”

Jeremy grit his teeth, and raised his gun again. But then it was gone. Just missing from his hand. Jeremy looked his hand over for a few seconds, wondering where it was. He looked to his enemy, and saw that he held it by the barrel, dangling it like some cat’s toy.

“I won’t tolerate any more of this. You will tell me...” The Chronomancer’s eyes widened. The gun ripped from his hand, and flew back into Jeremy’s. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but it happened.

Jeremy tried to give a scream of “SHUT UP!” before firing off as many rounds as his fingers and his mind could handle. But it just came out as a guttural scream. He didn’t even stop firing when he realized the Chronomancer had very quickly moved out of the way.

He felt his lower jaw shatter as two temporally-accelerated fists smashed across his face and into his stomach. He tried not to think of the pain, and instead thought of having a whole skull again. And it happened. The bones popped back into formation, but the pain refused to go away, and the internal damage had been done.

And there he was again, just hanging in front of his face. “What are you, irritation? Tell me before I kill you. Satisfy my curiosity, that way I don’t need to waste an ounce of my time on trying to learn who you are.”

And the Chronomancer saw it flash in his mind. He saw the hanging apparition, the one with the wings of quivering flesh and teeth instead of feathers. He saw the blood drip from every pore, he saw the ‘misery’ scrawled on his chest, he saw the ‘pain’ scratched on his forehead, he saw the deep gush of clotting blood drop from an open grin, and he saw fire everywhere else.

He paused for a second, considering. This wasn’t another Avatar of Void. This wasn’t even an Avatar. This sack of flesh wasn’t worth the dirt that the Avatars walked on.

Then what was he?

It was better to be safe then sorry. Might as well kill him off now before he caused any significant trouble. Might as well leave him for dead, he was dying anyway.

‘Feel what it’s like to die, jackass. Jeremy lurched forward and clutched the Chronomancer’s head in between his hands.

And then he saw the world through Jeremy’s eyes. And he felt what he was living through.

Of all the things the Chronomancer had felt, of all the things he had done, there was nothing else quite like dying.

Jeremy kept up the mental link as his heart began to slow, as blood began to fill his throat, as the pain slowly dulled away to make way for thoughts of death, and as every muscle in his body slowly began to relax, in expectation fort what was to come.

And Jeremy’s heart stopped.

The mental link was broken as Jeremy’s grip loosened from the Chronomancer’s head. He reeled back, trying to stand up, his top hat falling off his head. As soon as he had gained a mere inkling of stability in stature, he keeled over and fell to his knees as he felt an intense wave of vertigo and nausea wash over him.

So that’s what is was like to die of internal injuries.

For a few seconds there, he thought he had actually been dying. He thought that his quest had been stopped in its tracks by some idiot with a gun, and that the Cataclysm would still happen. That had been frightening.

He scrabbled around for his hat for a few seconds, and placed it back on his head upon feeling it. He stood up, and tried to brush himself off with a little dignity.

He took one good look into the face of the man he just killed, and he could’ve sworn he saw the word ‘fear’ flash on his forehead for just a second.

He didn’t intend on finding out, and left the corpse lying in the alley. And so, he thought the false prophecy became just that; false.

Jeremy stirred. Alone in the alley, his eyes blinked. And then his heart began to beat, very slowly at first.

‘Oh no, I’m not gonna die just yet...



Written by Ren
Start - 09/16/2001 (technically)
End - 05/01/2002

The Chronomancer, a villain so kick-ass that Jeremy couldn’t even beat him when cheating, is © MediaMan, and does not belong to me in any way, shape, or form.
 

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The C Force  © 1996-2001 Matt Laskowski   ---   The R. Force and other assorted crap © 1995-2002 Ren