the next dark age: book two insanity

chapter 14 the fallout

Stephanie almost fell back in shock. Sapphire was dead. First Harris, and now Sapphire.

"Please," Stephanie said to the others, "Please help me kill Dawn."

Lizzy responded with, "listen, I'm sorry, but we can't"

"Even though Sapphire is dead." She was looking right at Adam when she said this, and when Adam said and did nothing, her cheeks began to boil with rage, "Your sister just died, and you are going to do, NOTHING?"

"I cannot fight that man, and I especially cannot fight him over the body of my dead sister! It's no use, let's just get out of here."

Stephanie gave one final glare to the group and climbed over the rubble.

"Stephanie!" Adam yelled, but Stephanie was no longer listening. She now had a mission. She was going to kill Dawn, she didn't care if she died, and she knew that it couldn't bring Sapphire back, but none of that mattered. All that mattered was her anger and revenge

...

Trisha had yelled out when she saw Sapphire being strangled, and now was running towards her dead body. She had no idea that Stephanie was right around the corner, ready to spring too.

As she was about to grab onto the body of her friend, Trisha was thrown backwards by Dawn. Trisha noticed that he had taken off his gloves, revealing long claws on his fingertips.

Now focusing her energy towards Dawn, Trisha stood up and punched him in the stomach. Then in the face, and then in the face again, just for good measure. Dawn did not try to dodge any of these, instead he just took them like a rag doll, his head flew back with each punch, but there was no actual damage.

Trisha punched him again, and this time when he was hit, he grabbed Trisha's arm and flipped her over. As Trisha landed, part of her face was ripped off by Dawn. she should have fainted, but instead was now fueled by rage to keep going.

As Dawn was preparing a second hit, Stephanie pushed him off of Trisha, and almost sent him flying. Then, when Dawn did land, Stephanie grabbed him by the arm and waist, and actually did send him flying.

Dawn seemed to put up no resistance, and landed on his side in the fiery remains of the old TGK base, with his arm catching on fire. As Dawn stood up, he calmly ripped off his burning flesh and tossed it aside, and the part that was torn off immediately regenerated. He then began to make his way back towards Trisha and Sapphire, but this time there was anger in his eyes, and he seemed determined to no longer be playing around with his victims.

Meanwhile, Trisha was still on the ground. She was trying to scoop up the remains of Sapphire without being so careless as to fully decapitate her corpse. Maybe there was some way that Sapphire had survived that. Or at the very least, maybe her body could be saved from the burning. Someone this great deserved a great burial. She tried to avoid looking at Sapphire's eyes though, as their blank stare only reminded her of the same look her mother had given Trisha when her mom had died

Meanwhile, Stephanie saw that the fire had done no permanent damage to Dawn and told Trisha, "We need to get out of here. Now."

"Just let me take care of Sapphire. There must be something we can do for her," Trisha said, with hints of delirium in her voice.

Stephanie wasn't sure whether Trisha was just hoping to fix up the body, was in denial of Sapphire's death, or was full on crazy. Stephanie didn't care to find out, and screamed, "there isn't anything we can do. Come on"

Dawn was getting much closer, and screamed some sort of primal scream, and started to pick up the pace. Stephanie saw this as a good sign to run as far as she could away from this devil. She knew that she was leaving her only friend behind, but in that moment Stephanie did not have the mental strength to think about that. It took her a second, but eventually Trisha followed along too.

Stephanie saw that there was a building nearby that she could hide in, and dashed towards it hoping Dawn would not spot her. Sure enough, she was able to make it to the building before Dawn could see her enter. From her hiding spot Sapphire could see that Trisha did the same thing with another building, and then Dawn finally came into view.

"You cannot hide from me forever." Dawn yelled, "I will find you two eventually. And only one of you was protected by Michael." Stephanie hoped that it was her that Michael had decided to save.

"Fine," Dawn said "I suppose I will do this the fun way." Dawn pointed to the building next to the one Stephanie was in, and it was ripped to shreds by a bomb placed in it. The shrapnel hit the building Stephanie was in, which, along with the damage to the infrastructure caused by the fire, caused the building to start collapsing, along with the building Trisha had been in.

Knowing that she could not stay there long, Stephanie tried to exit through a back entrance to avoid Dawn. Instead, another piece of the building that had blown up whizzed past Stephanie's face, causing her to stop in her tracks. The object had been thrown with too much precision to be another piece from an explosion, meaning that it most likely came from Dawn.

Stephanie slowly turned around to face her attacker, "Go ahead, do what you want." Stephanie said. She thought back to what Dawn had said, about how Dawn could only hurt one of them. She had no idea if the next thing she said was true, but she really hoped that she would be right when she added "after all, you can't hurt me. You promised Michael that."

Dawn laughed, "oh my, do you honestly think Michael cared about you. You constantly lost your temper, you were no help in the fight against Nydia, and I have a good feeling that if you two were to meet right now there would be a lot of yelling. So let me ask you this: why would he choose you?"

"I helped him with the community. We knew each other for years." Stephanie said. She tried to sound confident, but memories had come flooding back to her, all the times that she had gotten mad at Michael, or all the times that she couldn't help anyone back when it was her, Harris, and Michael running the community.

"And yet you did nothing to help Harris when he was dying. Don't you see, it was Trisha that helped Nydia. It was Trisha, who had all three powers, and I have a feeling that Trisha is also one of the chosen by the Time god. So which one do you think would be more useful?"

Stephanie sat down, maybe it would be best if she just let Dawn kill her. After all, if Michael did choose two to save, then she would be one of the last ones he would choose.

Dawn stood over her, and Stephanie decided in that second that she was not going to die sitting down, if she would die, it would be on her feet. Stephanie jumped up and used all the strength remaining in her body to punch Dawn in the face. She connected with a satisfying crack.

But Dawn didn't flinch. He was sent back for sure, but as he was, he was in perfect control of his movement, which was seen by the fact that he was able to grab Stephanie and send her flying with him. His claws sank into the skin of Stephanie, and he pushed against her with his legs. The claws were starting to sink deeper and deeper, while her arm felt like rubber being stretched out, until it finally came loose from its socket. The leftover force of Dawn ripping out Stephanie's arm sent Steph flying back.

Stephanie knew that she would soon lose consciousness if she kept losing blood. Her healing factor would keep her alive, but she could not stand to die unconscious. So she stumbled over into the burning building, and forced herself into the fire, which began to cauterize. As the fire burned at her skin, she saw Dawn getting up with that crazed look in his eye, and Stephanie regretted nothing. She would continue to burn herself, and go through much worse pain if it meant that she could continue to fight that maniac.

Dawn meanwhile, put his hand up, and mentally removed part of the building from above Stephanie that was starting to come loose. Stephanie saw this though, and quickly rolled out of the way, and right into Dawn's way, who kicked her right in the head.

Stephanie was now on her back, with blood from her head spilling out onto the ground below. She wasn't sure how much longer she could fight. She also wasn't sure if her regeneration could heal that wound.

Nevertheless Stephanie stood up. Her vision was blurry, she was now completely numb, and might be on fire, but that would not stop her from killing Dawn. Her legs couldn't hold her though, and she fell to one knee.

She was lifted up by the collar by Dawn, and punched him again. It did nothing though.

Oh well, Stephanie was prepared to die.