For the Greater Good

Chapter 11

"Long Live the Day You Freed the Earth!"

The man hadn't seen sunlight in at least a year. His skin was as pale as paper, marred by long red paper cuts that had been made with anything that wasn't paper. Ugly slashes, purpled bruises, dirtied crumpled paper skin. For a regular human he was unimpressive, unoriginal. 

He was not supposed to be the final product. He was merely a resting point, a layover between flights. A nameless location that existed as a pit stop before the final destination.

He moved all wrong. He was reckless, blind, and brash. He was weak: a studious form, unfit for the Future Ruler of the Universe. He spoke of terms no one else could understand, and prided himself when he had displayed his superiority over others. He'd always felt compared: to the past, to the future, to his own sister. 

He hated her.

He hated her always. Burning like a kerosene fire, that no amount of water could put out. It raged and spit the flames of a Phoenix, rearing its ugly head when he was alone. The heat kept him warm, but it turned his paper skin to ashes.

That was okay, though. 

When his skin was gone, his hair would be too, and his freckles, and his eyes and nose and every feature he shared with her.

With the Final Destination. 

He was just another human, a resting point, before the end. 

He had not seen the sun in days. But that was okay, his own fury kept him alive. He refused to be nameless, to be a layover. He refused to back down and allow the silent, merciful end to come. He had poured his own chemicals on his body-- a warning to the Final Destination, but also not. He refused, refused, refused.

To not be the Endpoint.

Oliver Lancaster had done this to himself.

Was it Spite? Was it Greed? 

An effort to prove himself?

Xerxes peeled back the pointless gauze over his gunshot wound. It tore at his skin but there was no recognition of pain in his face-- Oliver's face. He rolls back his shoulder's stretching his limbs as though there had never been a bullet tearing through his body at all. He tossed the bloody gauze into the freshly made Chasm, a testimony to the threat he had buried beneath his shoes.

The Final Destination had been dragged out, bloodied and wrecked, and none of that breathe of life in its lungs. An unfortunate occurrence.

Behind him the cheers of the Outcasts ring clear as bells, as gunshots in Xerxes' minds. Mutants, powerful, but tamable. An army. There was nothing left to stop him.

Project Neutralizer had been completed.

"Love Live," Xerxes hummed with Oliver's blue eyes flaring the fires of Malice, "Me!"

***
WELCOME TO PART TWO. WE WILL START UP AGAIN TOMORROW.