- Doomsday - Volume One: Gods and Monsters

Chapter 86: A Clear, Blue Sky

(AN: Hey all, once again I am coming to you with another question to ask. Going through the earlier chapters the perspective switched between a third-person, biographical tone with some chapters talking about the Omnic Crisis through textbooks and interviews, etc, while the chapters about [Y/N] in the facility were first-person. Eventually I settled upon doing a third-person perspective because first-person just felt too restrictive, and didn't seem to flow as well in my opinion. Now, when I'm going through and cleaning up the older chapters (because there are many, many grammatical errors in the older chapters) I've been debating with myself whether to fully change chapters with [Y/N] from first- to third-person so that the shift doesn't feel as jarring. I'm against it in part because I don't want to fully change the older chapters, as it serves as a way to show my growth in writing, and messing with it would take away some of the early 'charm'. I'm conflicted, and they will be cleaned up either way, but would like some input from you all who have read all the way through and have seen both styles, what are your thoughts? I value any comments, but besides the long introduction, enjoy the chapter as always...)

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The Doomsday collapsed onto his behind, covering his face with both hands, the exhaustion he felt was like no other he had ever felt before, the stress and pressure placed upon his shoulders finally starting to leave it's marks. All the work they had put into getting Harry back from Luthor and then Overwatch, who he had worked alongside for years, killing many who he very well may have fought alongside at some point in his profession. He, and those closest to him, had dragged along through the mud, now branded as terrorists. It wasn't necessarily an incorrect assessment. What they did could easily be classified as terrorism, but in doing so it erased all the back-breaking fights, the blood sweat and tears he had put in ever since he had first encountered the strike force on that fateful night upon the dark, swampy moors.

Even though he had people around him, Ray and Rose, Bizarro and Lobo, he couldn't help but feel as if he were simply dragging them down with him on his spiral to hell, that they had no real stake worth damaging their reputations over. Especially for their pilot who had virtually up-rooted his entire life and career to go play vigilante on the other side of the planet. He was an older man, with a family, and fighting an international military force shouldn't have been how he would be remembered for his years of combat and service. Rose had only just recuperated from her fight in New Mombasa, with a fresh new scar, and mental ones that couldn't be hidden so easily behind an eye-patch, a constant reminder of her failure and the literal severance between herself and her blood family.

Fleeing into a land he had known vaguely years before, heralded as a quasi-religious figure who was sent to deliver the wastelanders from the evil and genocidal tyrant who had set himself upon them, unleashing his barbarian hordes to rape and pillage. Somehow he had managed to scrounge together alliances between the Junkers he barely known from long ago, rebuilt the capital dfrom it's abysmal state and fought back a siege that would have signalled the end for the Junker people as a whole. The death and bloodshed he witnessed was on a scale he'd never witnessed before, he had seen battlefields of course, but never truly had [Y/N] been a leading participant in a full-on war.

So many looked up towards the stars, wishing upon the brightest that they could see, that the Yowie would come and save them, and drive back the warlord from whence he came, and bring them peace and prosperity, as the stories foretold. The Yowie wasn't a person, it was an idea, a resistance movement that embodied the wasteland as a whole. A strong, unmovable force of nature, who wouldn't listen to authority and did as they wanted. Strong enough to protect the desert's beige, far and wide, and defend it from those who wished to stain it red. However, [Y/N] was not this Yowie. [Y/N] was a father who was tired of running, and tired of fighting, having seen enough conflict in his lifetime to satiate any blood lusted warrior.