Shattered Sands

[Enel]

The supplication of my entourage had served to quell my anger a little bit. But here he was again, a man I didn’t even know, telling me what I was and wasn’t.

I narrow my eyes and lower my voice. “Do you believe in fate, mortal?”

He shrugs almost exasperatedly.

I continue. “I believe it strange that we ran into each other again so soon. The greatest of all gods, and the most impudent of all humans. Surely … you were meant to be saved.”

I spread my arms wide. “Here I am. In this world, this place, this time. Taken down to the level of a mortal.” I pause to let it sink in. “The only opportunity you’ll ever have to best a God.”

I smile. I don’t need my haki to predict his next move, though it comes anyway.

A bullet.

I jolt forward in that moment, as the flintlock sparks and the mini-men behind me scream for cover. The bullet slips past my neck, my fist comes forward, wreathed in lightning, and I plant it in the mortal’s stomach. It’s hard to discern what he feels beneath the immediate look of shock upon his face. Is that anger? Regret? It’s delicious, whatever it is. I want more.

I thrust my other hand forward as an open palm, letting loose a barrage of electricity. He’s damaged, but not incapacitated. Bah, if this were the real world …

But it seems I’ve underestimated him. Instead of backing off, as I’d predicted, he goes in for the kill, shoving his pistol-arm through the electricity, even as he screams, and into … my …

The worst moments are when you feel an attack coming, but you can’t dodge it. Even as I angle my head backwards, the bullet explodes on my chin, drawing blood and kicking me back off my feet. I don’t see much but I feel his weight come down on me, trying to pin me.

Immediately, instinctively, my body lets out every spark of electricity. I’ve seen the effects my electricity has on others, and I’ve even felt it, thanks to the damn robot who was able to copy my powers before. What that tells me is, he should be hurting a lot. He should be trying desperately to get away from me.

But he’s not. He thinks he can hurt me more than I can hurt him.

The fool. He’ll only hasten his demise.

He tries to get me with that hidden blade of his, and I grab his outthrust hand with both of mine. We struggle, the blade a few inches from my face. I can see the pain on his face, and it’s almost ecstatic to be able to see it from so close, to see him so close to hurting me only to be denied it.

As I push his hand away, he shifts his weight and brings his other fist to bear on the side of my face. That’s less good. But it lets me roll over, turning the tables. Now he’s beneath me, and I shock him with both palms, letting everything I have course into his chest. But still he resists, headbutting me backwards and drawing his sword into a cutting slice across my ribcage. Bastard.

“You like pain?!” I spit in his direction.

“No,” he says. He brings the sword down in a cutting arc and I have to bend backwards to dodge it. I swear I feel it take off one of my chest hairs. Inbetween his sword and dagger, it’s actually pretty hard to dodge, even with my mantra filling me in on his every move. Finally he spits out: “I just don’t hate it as much as I hate you.”

This is genuinely amusing to me. I laugh, despite the opening it gives him. “Not a religious man, eh?” I retort.

This pisses him off even more, and I can see it on his face.  Oh, I’m enjoying this so much. “You’re not God,” he says.

That pisses me off. “How would you know? Have you met God? Is he kind and merciful and loving and forgiving?” I sneer. “You see what you want to, even when the truth is right in front of your own eyes.” I let my power surge. “I’m greater than you. Accept it. Accept your destiny.”

“Fuck you,” he says.