Domino Theory Part 3

Hours Earlier; Yellowstone Docks:

What's in front of me... The things far from my reach... Those things are a constant in and out of faded memory. A burning sensation throughout my throat, which causes my calls for help not to be heard...

"We have him...- What is this thing...- Don't pull it out?"

I hear a man voice... Are they another enemy, out to kill my brother? Another one of those monsters? - I hear another voice... My mother's voice.

" Zel." Her breath felt so warm on the ears, holding me tightly to her stomach. Zenith's heartbeat, patters stagiary inside. Enough for me to catch an ear of his existents. If I had to, I would describe the feeling as nostalgic. "Promise to keep him safe."

Is that what i promise you? To protect him? - Right, it is... I have to... I must-

My body lights to flames, opening my eyes to a creature that is lengthy and dark. The image of the man who took everything I had that terrifying night. I would kill him countless times, however, he still finds a way to come back... He's an immortal devil that haunts my being.

Why have I been cursed in this way, though I done nothing but lend a helping hand? The answer doesn't even cross my mind. -

"Dammit!! No-"

Those screams... Why do I constantly hear them? Do you actually feel pain? -

"We need immediate back- Eh!! Ahhh!!" -

Are you really mortal?

"Do everything you can to bring him in alive!!"-

These voices, are they even you?

"How is he so agile? - Eh!!"

In this chaotic amount of fog... Have I blindly brought any harm to him, my brother? -

The sound of a gunshot and the feeling of a piece of metal that burns hotter in my leg, wakes me to dust and debris, bodies crisping beside me. Bodies that wore millitarry type gear...

Marching up to me as my body gives out, a familiar yet fierce woman embraces me, catching me in her arms. My chin on her shoulder, a whisper into my ear is the last thing I hear.

Those words... It had something to do with her... Repaying me, for something. Whatever she said, the burning rage that ate at my heart settle at them, and what caught my eye, was the woman's blond hair, swiftly falling to her backside.

November Eighth, Twenty Forty-Six, Nova Interrogation Room; A few minutes after Zel was Shot again:

He was here for just a glimpse... His cries, his embrace, I heard them... I felt them... So why? Why did they slip from my fingers? Why all I could muster was those words. Zen... I'm so sorry... I'm sorry... Your big brother is so damn powerless...-

Bubbles rush between my fingers, boiling at the light of green flames bursting from my body. - He whines my name, his struggles... Has he really been tortured? Have something capture my brother? Is he in pain?

"My, Zel, you should've been more protective over your little brother." - Standing amid the steam and boiling water, my father looks down at me as I grovel the last piece of my strength. "He's now even further out of your reach." -

"Shut up!! Stay out of this you damn demon!" - The toes of my feet melt into the flooring, skin flaming as I struggle to stand, carrying the weight of his words as well as the weakness in my bones.

"Demon? How spiteful. And to your father, no less." - After those words he spewed in a smile, he presses his humongous hand on the top of my head. Lifting it and forcing us to look eye to eye. "I'm sorry, but I will be borrowing your body for a split hour."

- Borrow? My body?

"You and the rest of these no-good children of mine failed in a task that should have been no easier than walking. Now, I must handle this on my own." - Lightning strikes every blood cell that pumps within me, shutting down the flames that burn out endlessly. "After this..." Father's body vanishes from in front of me, however I am still able to hear his voice in my head. "I promise you will return to us safely in your cage, my son." -

No longer in control of his weaken body, Zel stands. Water dripples down his hand and arms, he ash the chains clamp around his ankles under seconds. Stomping to the shut metal door, near the obstacle, Zel simply presses his palm against it, melting a hole in the door with a tornado of beaming flames. Those flames melt the entire hallway, shutting down the alarms, including bursting a door belonging to a cell next to him, mark with the name Eternal.

Nova's Main headquarter, Zenith's Cell (Zenith's Perspective):

I cough in my hand uncontrollably, nearly spilling over the tea handed to me, sitting on the edge of a bed in the room I first woke up in.

"Easy now." The one who gave me the drink, Meniko, has her hand on my stomach and other on my shoulder. "Healing take time."

Meniko's hand starts to glow once again, tightening her hold on my stomach. I look over her head as she did. Her hair stills glitter. Meniko must have hit the bathroom the very moment we arrive here.

-"Hey," Letting out a small chuckle, both our eyes met, gaining my full attention. "That was super crazy, heh, talking back to the woman who literally holds the plug to your life." She slides her hand from my stomach to my chest, healing that part of me as well. "Then again, you always hated following rules."

-I take her wrist in my hand, moving it from off my chest, causing her to stop using her ability. "I'm fine right there. There's no reason to heal my chest." I tell her.

-Even so, Meniko decides to pull me down to her lap by my shoulder. She rests her lefthand on top of my head, staring down at me. "Learn to take a hint for once... I want you to use me... Well use me to rest that is." A smile stretches across the girl's face.

I have to give Meniko that point. I haven't gained a proper rest since the time I spent at Keysei's bar. Not to mention...

"Thanks..." I stare at her looming head over mines, seeing for the first time in a while that her eyes are flush in passion. Proof that for all these years, I gave Meniko no thought whatsoever.

"Don't mention it... You know, I can start doing this for you time to time. After you work out or go on missions and stuff like-

"I... Have a question." I purposely cut her short, shutting my eyes and putting my arm over my forehead, fingers nearly contacting her white shirt.

"Yeah?" She easily let's go everything she was going to say, just to answer back.

It was hard to let it out. Each moment I take to think it through, I felt a minute pass by. Meniko, she waits patiently for what I'm trying to say. She seems to enjoy having me lay on her lap for a long period at the end of the day. Well... Here goes nothing.

"Are you okay?" I slip out to her, concerned how could she smile on, even though she suffered more than me. How could she cheer me up, when she was face to face with hell? Meniko... She was with the Sigma Flames for months. Not only that, but her name never once crossed my mind. I only saved her in the midst of trying to get back Juna...

"Oh? Um... I'm fine, I wasn't hurt that badly back there. You and my big sis was handling everything, remember?"

She obviously avoids the true question, pretending I meant the fight back there at the docks.

"No, not that..." I open my eyes to her, seeing that her mouth fell from a smile to a blank astonish expression. "When you were kidnap, did they do anything to you-

-"Hey!" Her hands clench over my shoulder. "What..." Her voice goes back to a soft facade of laughter. "What do you think of Nako? I couldn't help but notice you two are awful close. Do you like her or something?"

- I take Meniko's hand away from her face, lifting up from her lap. "Are you serious? Are you really trying to change the subject right now?" I couldn't let her continue to dance around all of it.

"Does it matter?" She snatches her hand away from my hold, no longer having the courage to look back at me. "I was captured." She caresses her neck. "That's all."

"That's all?" I ask her, knowing that wasn't the whole truth.

"I..." Tears fell from her eyes and her legs trembled as she squeezed her shirt in a knot. "I can't... - That was all!" She shouts at me, shaking her head. "Nothing else! So, stop! Stop asking right now!" She breaths in and then breaths out. ".... Please... Just stop..."

Her tears were proof enough. The sigma flames, they did something to her. Though why hide it? - No, I can't be stupid, she obviously doesn't want to remember it. Was it that painful for her?

"You..." No words could convince her to let me know of her experience. "Your name..." Nor could I ever relate to what she feels right at this moment. I just might lose her too. "If I'm being honest with you, none of it cross my mind... This been eating at me the very time we were reunited." Laughter slips from my sanity drifting from the conversation to a memory of how annoyed i was by Meniko's constant smiles. "And while I'm being real, I hated you so much back then. Those smiles of yours, that cheery voice. I wanted to kill you at those times." What the hell am I saying to her... "You must have known that much?"

I eye a Meniko who gazes at me in blank stares. She faces me speechless, loss for words. She looks to hold a linger of doubt. Doubting all the moments we spent together, including now.

"I did nothing but comfort you..." She speaks in a whining voice.

"That's true." I reply. "But that was what I hated the most about you. How can you be smiling in my face even after what all the kids told you about me and Juna? How can you hang around us, though everyone shunned us? Why didn't you follow someone else, someone who would respect your outgoing personality more? If it wasn't for you being around me, maybe..." Maybe her life would have turn out differently.

"When it happened, I was in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet." She laughs, breaking out into a story. "God... I had to take a piss." She then cried. "A few other girls came in, some of the freshman's who decided to skip the first day of school. I only knew that because they wouldn't stop going on about how you were hot and too bad that you're a junior. Talk about annoying girl drama, right?"

The more her story went on, I slowly knew what this was. The answer to my question. The day of orientation.

"Anyway... " She clench onto her shoulder. "The moment I was about to leave the stall, we all heard a loud bang from the gymnasium... Then a minute after, shouts coming from the hallway. One of the girl's cried Omg, so loud, dropping her purse and supplies on the floor. I can even recall the lip lose I saw roll under my stall door." She forces a smile and another laugh. "It was cherry. How basic. I'm sure no boy would've talk to her this entire school year. What you think?"

I stayed quiet. I'm sure she doesn't really want me to answer.

"I prefer uncolored ones. Though, that's getting off subject." She let go of her shoulder putting it on her lap, seeming much calmer. "Those girls... Once the screams outside settle down and the door crept open, their body was smack with a flash of flames. They were blue. And all I heard was quick Yeps. I would've piss myself again, however, I stayed calm. I figure I'm in a school full of superheroes, so I should be saved at any fleeting moment. Talk about full of hope." She dumps her head down. "The stall door was melted open, because I locked it, revealing a mask demon, bodies blacken and crisped behind it. I thought I was dead. In hell. In away... I was right. I was knock cold by that demon. Woke up to more. Used for my ability. Then," She look up to the lights above us, holding her neck. "Because I tried to kill myself, I was choke to near death by Iota, daily. All the way until the day you two arrive... It really was hell" She looks back at me, oddly giving out a smile after all she spewed to me.

Choked to near death... Every day she woke up, Myune choke her. She couldn't kill herself. She lost the will to live, but instead of putting her out of her misery, the Sigma Flames tortured her. If I knew this... Myune, why did he...

"I'm-

"I'm sorry. Didn't mean to dump all that on to you." Meniko hops up off the bed. "Try to get some rest, okay."

She walks to the door. But I get up before she could leave out, reaching my hand out for hers. - I can't let her leave with just that. I have to say something.

-The moment my finger grazes hers and she turns around, a loud crack comes down from the ceiling, a hand wider than my head, press against my neck. Face slam to the floor, and weight of a person and rubble on my back, a familiar voice laughs in my ear as I struggle to budge my body.

"Tag~! I found you!!"

The brother of the person I killed return for another rematch, Gamma.