The Bellators

3:9:8

Deep down in the dark cave below the house, below the sharp teeth on the ceiling and above the bottomless abyss of the sea, behind the pale man, Dana, Kokei, and Ekitai's attentions all snap to the same intruder, all of their sentimentality shaken to terror, staggering back with raging heartbeats that tug them from the soft misery into an intense panic.

Ekitai instinctively inserts his hand through his overcoat, Dana's right hand closes into a fist as the entire forearm portion of her right sleeve vanishes in a blue light to reveal her golden arm, and Kokei's eyes flare up with pink arcs sparking off of her body.

Yet in front of them, Meditat raises his arm straight in front of the three in signal to hold from attack, and he commands with a voice that leaps from a gloomy grief to a stern strength: "All of you need to get out of here, now!" before he then abruptly breaks into another sequence of ripping coughs which he covers with his other arm, suppressing the dry agony.

Although right behind him, Dana contends boldly: "We're not leaving you Medit! We're not losing you again."

That same familiar clang of chains reverberates, attracting all four of the group's attention in a snap as Meditat's cough also concludes, letting him drop his arm.

In leisurely footsteps strolls Exitium from the machine, every step causing the chains around his neck to shake and clang into each other, the same type of chains that are wrapped around his forearms and hands, heavy and built out of his dark crimson obsidian-like metal.

His body radiates with the crimson streaks that pour down from the eraser insignia on his chest, reversal of the pencil, which sits below the dark silver pauldron the same color as the belt. Like blood pouring over his body, the red splits into branches from his chest down his arms and torso, and through the belt down the inner thighs between the black jagged pads on his outer thighs and ribs.

The soft white light emitting from the chrome pad beneath his feet shines on the crimson scale plating of the suit, his hide like a dragon.

He glares straight at Meditat through the triangular lenses glowing red similar to the jaw vent wide like an unhinged smile all below the hood that carries a streak up the lenses from the top of the mask over itself in a curve resembling that of a goat's horns.

He takes a few steps forwards before his feet kicks one of the sticks with its jagged sole, to which he comes to a stop and glances down at the pile littering the whole pad. His right hand remains by his side, cloaked by the cape, but his left one hangs in view.

"It's impossible yet at the same time it all makes sense now...you're hideous face, your reluctance to use your own abilities. I started to realize something was going on when I saw the blood you left behind on Earth 3, blood I knew I did not pull out of you, but blood that followed one of those coughs. But it's understandable now, knowing a mere product of our abilities was hoping to put me down. I won't bother counting all these on the floor," Exitium monologues while kicking another cluster of sticks, "But huh, you really went all that distance just to stand a chance. All this time, all the errands I had to do to track you down, all the trips I had to make from one end of the Superverse to another, and what's more, I was reaching Earth 99 when I saw the sudden change in place. I wasted so much time, so much effort, all after what...this?"

Exitium extends his left arm outwards and continues, "I should be relieved that the real Meditat is truly gone, but it irritates me so much to know I've been being played with all this time, my peaceful life squashed just for this JOKE!"

He throws his arm down and rants, "My life was great without you, these past ten years have been the quietest it's ever been, but when I heard the news it was deafening, it was tortuous. But to know it was this...and you really are here complaining about being alive when you're doing everything evade death, it...," Exitium's left hand clench tightly into a fist, "Your suffering means nothing to me anymore, I'm going to end your life, and I'm going to go out of my way to ensure that there are NO other copies, that THIS is it, that it ENDS FOR GOOD. I don't care who I have to slaughter to do that, I don't care if it's your family or just some random man standing over the door, I don't care as long as YOU ARE GONE!"