Post by citizenmike on Mar 4, 2009 10:34:02 GMT -5
Silence fell in the elevator as Johnny and Veronica stood across one another.
Johnny looked at Veronica, only to turn away when she caught his gaze. And when she did, she kept her gaze until Johnny caught hers, only to turn away herself as Johnny gazed back. It was give-and-take in its simplest form.
Veronica needed to rest again.
Johnny held her by the hand and walked her back to the hotel. They didn't say a thing, they just kept quiet and enjoyed the moment for what it was.
The elevator suddenly stopped on the 19th floor, the floor beneath the penthouse.
Johnny pressed the door open button, but the damn thing wouldn't budge.
"I think were stuck..." Johnny said, looking around.
Johnny removed his jacket and folded up the sleeves of his shirt.
"What are you doing?", Veronica asked.
"I'm gonna try to get that door open."
Veronica motioned before Johnny and pressed the button to the 17th floor.
"There are other ways, Johnny.", Veronica smiled at him.
"Good thinking, Roth."
Johnny motioned back as the elevator took them a floor lower.
The elevator opened up on the 17. Johnny and Veronica stepped out, walked across the hall, walked to the fire exit and climbed up the steps. Not talking, just going through the motions... Veronica figured, Whatever happens, happens
As they approached the 20th floor, they saw small bits of crystal paved over the steps.
Johnny held the door to the fire exit open for Veronica as she stepped through. And once they got there, they found the entire floor covered in crystal. The door to Veronica's room was sealed completely.
"What on Earth?", Veronica muttered.
Johnny approached space that was once the door to Veronica's room.
There was something strangely familiar about this. For a moment, Johnny wondered if he saw the same thing in the Superman movies, but remembering the bracelet that had been bounded onto him, he knew all to well what it was.
Johnny hit the crystal and started banging. "Come on Myzrael, I know you're in there!" Johnny hit the crystal space as hard as he could for as long as he could. But eventually, his body gave in; his knuckles covered in blood. Wrenching in pain, Johnny stooped to his knees and continued banging. "Get out!" He screamed. "Get out!"
Veronica dropped to her knees, covered Johnny in her arms and pulled him from the space. "Its fine, Johnny.", Veronica began; sweetly, softly. "Let him keep it."
"No!", Johnny screamed as he pulled himself away from Veronica's grasp and resumed banging on the door. "GET OUT! MYZRAEL, I KNOW YOU CAN F*CKING HEAR ME! GET OUT!"
Johnny screamed in agony with every shot his fist took on the crystal.
Veronica pulled Johnny away again. "Its not worth it, Johnny. Let it go."
Veronica held Johnny tight and close.
Closing his eyes, Johnny breathed heavily and held onto Veronica, whispering, “I'm sorry, Roth. I'm sorry.”
Veronica kissed him on the forehead and smiled, “There's nothing to be sorry about.”
<***>
With his head at rest over her shoulder, Johnny and Veronica sat along the sidewalk in front of the hotel.
“Don't be glum,” Veronica said looking over at Johnny. “Let it go, Johnny. Its just a room.”
“It isn't just that, Roth.” Johnny replied as he pulled his head away from Veronica's shoulder and rose. “Its almost like he wants to hurt us! He knows something and he's keeping it in... He's just so snug about who he is and he looks at us, you and me, as lesser beings-”
“Let it go, Johnny” Veronica cut Johnny off.
“You know who once regarded human beings as lesser beings,” Johnny continued, neglecting what Veronica just told him. “Lucifer!”
Johnny shrugged back on the sidewalk beside Veronica and slumped. “I don't know Roth, maybe we're in hell?”
“I don't believe we are.”
“How so?”
“I've known you enough by now to know you're good.”
“No, I'm not.” Johnny turned to her and shook his head. “I'm rotten, Roth.”
“What could you have done to say that?”
“I don't know.”
“Then how do you know you're no good.”
“I don't, but its something I feel.”
“Johnny, I don't see it.”
“What do you see?”
Veronica turned to Johnny and looked at him.
“I see a lost man.” Veronica replied. “And if this indeed was hell, we wouldn't be having any fun here.”
“Point taken!”, Johnny chuckled.
Johnny turned away from her and looked down. “I'm still not going to let this go.”
“Why?”
“He took you're room...”
“Its just a room and it wasn't like I left anything in there.”
“But still, its your room Roth.”
“What is it about my room?”
“Its your room. And he took it. Its the one place in this crazy world you've got to call your own and he took it. He trespassed you, and when he did it trespassed you.”
“Johnny...”
Johnny rose from the sidewalk again and looked back at Veronica. “I have to do right by you.”
“Why?”
“Because I have to.”
<***>
His energies were recharged. The voices ceased to haunt him, as he slowly awakened from his slumber. Suddenly, he was assaulted by emotions; anger and frustration at the foremost of the pack. Suddenly a word pierced his thoughts: Lucifer. His eyes opened, and the white crystal surrounding him slowly eroded, leaving him standing erect.
‘Johnny’ He mouthed the words with obvious distaste. This human was proving to be bothersome. What was his untoward aggression due to this time? His impatience stirred within him, and the crimson surrounding his pupils flashed violently. He will find Johnny, and make him understand that he, Myzrael, is one NOT to be trifled with.
He concentrated, and he sensed the source of the emotions coming from the street below. He smiled a cruel smile. They were there. Him and his female companion. His wings took form, and he walked over to the window. The surface of the window rippled, and Myzrael stepped through it, and took flight as soon as he felt the wind rush through his hair. He saw the two, sitting on the sidewalk outside the hotel.
Myzrael dived at supersonic speed, and landed with a great impact behind the couple, the shockwave causing Johnny to stagger forward and smashing the other a good 10 feet away.
‘I believe I was being summoned-’ He looked down at the sprawled form of Johnny ‘by the name of the Morning Star.’ His mouth twitched in obvious annoyance, and with a flourish of a hand, Johnny was lifted off his feet and held hanging in the air. A second later he was hurled with great speed at the hotel wall, where he got smashed into the wall hard. Blood escaped from his lips, as his eyes widened in pain. He crumpled to the ground, and Myzrael turned to face the woman.
<***>
Veronica motioned after Johnny, but the angel Myzrael stood before her, practically towering over her.
She took a deep breath as she stepped backwards, keeping her eye on the angel.
It was time... Veronica nodded and pulled a handgun out of her purse. She continued her backwards steps as the gun shook between both her hands.
“Don't hurt him. Just go!”
<***>
Myzrael looked at the gun pointed at him. He laughed.
'You cannot hurt me with such crude weaponry' He said coldly, as a black tendril of dark energy extended from one of his hands and whipped the gun out of her hand.
'I will not have you interfere'. He closed his hands as if praying, and a giant globe of water surrounded Veronica and trapped her inside.
He turned to Johnny and started walking slowly towards him.
<***>
Johnny was hurting, man. Every bone, muscle and nerve throbbed with pain.
Watching Myzrael approach, Johnny was pretty damn sure that his time was up.
Johnny turned his head and found Veronica trapped in what he could only describe to himself as an “water prison”. Veronica looked like she saw screaming, but damn, he couldn't hear her. Suddenly, she started nodding down at the ground. Johnny dropped his sights and found a handgun before Veronica.
Johnny crawled as quickly as he could, picked the handgun, and covered it in his blazer.
<***>
Myzrael raised his hand, and Johnny was lifted from the ground.
'If only I was like the Morning Star, the most powerful, beautiful, and intelligent among my kind, I might show some mercy. I speak of course, before he was unfairly cast out of the pearly gates..'
He thrust his hand forward, and Johnny was crushed into the wall again with a sickening crunch. He drew his hand to him, and Johnny flew towards him, stopping inches away from his face. Myzrael looked into Johnny's eyes.
'There is no greater understanding than that found..' he closed his eyes. 'In the throes of pain'. He opened his eyes, and the crimson was there, it surrounded Johnny, as Myzrael gazed into Johnny's soul.
Suddenly, every cell in Johnny's body felt like it was on fire, every second an agonizing eternity of unending torment. Johnny could not comprehend anything, through the haze of pain wracking his body. He was on fire, then frozen, then electrocuted, then torn into pieces, then remade once more. The cycle of sensation repeating itself over and over, and his energy was waning, his sanity eroding, there was nothing that mattered, nothing that existed, nothing that could compare to this feeling of helplessness. He succumbed, he gave in, and he could take no more. The anguish was unendurable, he would have wished for death to have a respite, yet he was brought from the brink over and over, to be made to suffer again. A thousand years of pure unadulterated anguish was compressed into the mere five seconds he stared into Myzraels eyes, and even Myzrael didn't exist anymore, just the pain, and the pain, and the pain.
Myzrael flung him away from him, a rag-doll in the hands of a God. Johnny fell on the ground, not moving.
<***>
The air around Veronica slowly began to thin.
She couldn't scream.
Hitting the water did her nothing; girl couldn't even go through it.
Veronica held on the final breaths as Johnny crashed onto the concrete earth once more.
Veronica dropped to her knees as tears drew from her blue eyes.
That was it...
Veronica let herself go and collapsed.
<***>
The form of Johnny in such a helpless pose suddenly struck Myzrael. The crimson in his eyes did not recede. He was being mentally assaulted, once more. The memories, and the pain came rushing back to him.
Mastema and the fall from grace and the anger, and the massacre, and the light, and his unending fall into darkness, where nothing existed but the void in him, and the void surrounding him.
The exquisite pain he inflicted was only too familiar for the Dark Angel. He fell on his knees, and screamed as his wings disintegrated, and he was Vittorio once more. Vittorio the mortal, with the blond hair and violet eyes. He looked at his hands in shock and disbelief that he had transformed once more, at such an inopportune moment.
<***>
Johnny couldn't move. And even if he could, he wouldn't.
This isn't how its supposed to end.
Something has to give, damn it!
<***>
Vittorio gazed behind him at the unconscious woman. He was never introduced to her.. He suddenly was taken by his actions, and stood, making his way unsteadily to check on her.
<***>
Johnny pushed his head to find what was left of Myzrael approach Veronica's fallen body.
The bastard was gonna pay...
Agony echoed off Johnny's scream as he pulled Veronica's hand gun from his jacket and fired at Myzrael. His vision was hazy; his pain so intense he could barely keep his arm up.
He missed.
Damn it.
Myzrael turned Johnny's way.
Johnny couldn't believe it, he looked nothing like Myzrael. He looked like a boy no older than twenty. And unlike Myzrael, he actually looked like a divine being... An angel, with blond hair and violet eyes.
F*ck this!
The bastard has to pay...
Johnny cried in agony as he lifted his arm, aimed at Myzrael's head, pulled the trigger and fired again.
Johnny's arm gave up on him and jerked downwards as he fired and shot Myzrael on the shoulder.
Damn, he missed again.
<***>
Myzrael heard a shot, and turned to see Johnny with a gun pointed at him. He stared at him impassively, as another shot rung in the silence of the night. He felt a piercing pain in his shoulder, and he felt himself falling.
<***>
Johnny took one last look at him before closing his eyes and dropping head on the concrete and blacking out.
“Veronica,” Johnny thought. “If I could only bring myself to you...”
<***>
Vittorio's vision clouded, as he lay on the cool pavement. A lone tear fell down his cheek as he whispered something to the wind.
‘Myzrael what have you done now….’
Johnny looked at Veronica, only to turn away when she caught his gaze. And when she did, she kept her gaze until Johnny caught hers, only to turn away herself as Johnny gazed back. It was give-and-take in its simplest form.
Veronica needed to rest again.
Johnny held her by the hand and walked her back to the hotel. They didn't say a thing, they just kept quiet and enjoyed the moment for what it was.
The elevator suddenly stopped on the 19th floor, the floor beneath the penthouse.
Johnny pressed the door open button, but the damn thing wouldn't budge.
"I think were stuck..." Johnny said, looking around.
Johnny removed his jacket and folded up the sleeves of his shirt.
"What are you doing?", Veronica asked.
"I'm gonna try to get that door open."
Veronica motioned before Johnny and pressed the button to the 17th floor.
"There are other ways, Johnny.", Veronica smiled at him.
"Good thinking, Roth."
Johnny motioned back as the elevator took them a floor lower.
The elevator opened up on the 17. Johnny and Veronica stepped out, walked across the hall, walked to the fire exit and climbed up the steps. Not talking, just going through the motions... Veronica figured, Whatever happens, happens
As they approached the 20th floor, they saw small bits of crystal paved over the steps.
Johnny held the door to the fire exit open for Veronica as she stepped through. And once they got there, they found the entire floor covered in crystal. The door to Veronica's room was sealed completely.
"What on Earth?", Veronica muttered.
Johnny approached space that was once the door to Veronica's room.
There was something strangely familiar about this. For a moment, Johnny wondered if he saw the same thing in the Superman movies, but remembering the bracelet that had been bounded onto him, he knew all to well what it was.
Johnny hit the crystal and started banging. "Come on Myzrael, I know you're in there!" Johnny hit the crystal space as hard as he could for as long as he could. But eventually, his body gave in; his knuckles covered in blood. Wrenching in pain, Johnny stooped to his knees and continued banging. "Get out!" He screamed. "Get out!"
Veronica dropped to her knees, covered Johnny in her arms and pulled him from the space. "Its fine, Johnny.", Veronica began; sweetly, softly. "Let him keep it."
"No!", Johnny screamed as he pulled himself away from Veronica's grasp and resumed banging on the door. "GET OUT! MYZRAEL, I KNOW YOU CAN F*CKING HEAR ME! GET OUT!"
Johnny screamed in agony with every shot his fist took on the crystal.
Veronica pulled Johnny away again. "Its not worth it, Johnny. Let it go."
Veronica held Johnny tight and close.
Closing his eyes, Johnny breathed heavily and held onto Veronica, whispering, “I'm sorry, Roth. I'm sorry.”
Veronica kissed him on the forehead and smiled, “There's nothing to be sorry about.”
<***>
With his head at rest over her shoulder, Johnny and Veronica sat along the sidewalk in front of the hotel.
“Don't be glum,” Veronica said looking over at Johnny. “Let it go, Johnny. Its just a room.”
“It isn't just that, Roth.” Johnny replied as he pulled his head away from Veronica's shoulder and rose. “Its almost like he wants to hurt us! He knows something and he's keeping it in... He's just so snug about who he is and he looks at us, you and me, as lesser beings-”
“Let it go, Johnny” Veronica cut Johnny off.
“You know who once regarded human beings as lesser beings,” Johnny continued, neglecting what Veronica just told him. “Lucifer!”
Johnny shrugged back on the sidewalk beside Veronica and slumped. “I don't know Roth, maybe we're in hell?”
“I don't believe we are.”
“How so?”
“I've known you enough by now to know you're good.”
“No, I'm not.” Johnny turned to her and shook his head. “I'm rotten, Roth.”
“What could you have done to say that?”
“I don't know.”
“Then how do you know you're no good.”
“I don't, but its something I feel.”
“Johnny, I don't see it.”
“What do you see?”
Veronica turned to Johnny and looked at him.
“I see a lost man.” Veronica replied. “And if this indeed was hell, we wouldn't be having any fun here.”
“Point taken!”, Johnny chuckled.
Johnny turned away from her and looked down. “I'm still not going to let this go.”
“Why?”
“He took you're room...”
“Its just a room and it wasn't like I left anything in there.”
“But still, its your room Roth.”
“What is it about my room?”
“Its your room. And he took it. Its the one place in this crazy world you've got to call your own and he took it. He trespassed you, and when he did it trespassed you.”
“Johnny...”
Johnny rose from the sidewalk again and looked back at Veronica. “I have to do right by you.”
“Why?”
“Because I have to.”
<***>
His energies were recharged. The voices ceased to haunt him, as he slowly awakened from his slumber. Suddenly, he was assaulted by emotions; anger and frustration at the foremost of the pack. Suddenly a word pierced his thoughts: Lucifer. His eyes opened, and the white crystal surrounding him slowly eroded, leaving him standing erect.
‘Johnny’ He mouthed the words with obvious distaste. This human was proving to be bothersome. What was his untoward aggression due to this time? His impatience stirred within him, and the crimson surrounding his pupils flashed violently. He will find Johnny, and make him understand that he, Myzrael, is one NOT to be trifled with.
He concentrated, and he sensed the source of the emotions coming from the street below. He smiled a cruel smile. They were there. Him and his female companion. His wings took form, and he walked over to the window. The surface of the window rippled, and Myzrael stepped through it, and took flight as soon as he felt the wind rush through his hair. He saw the two, sitting on the sidewalk outside the hotel.
Myzrael dived at supersonic speed, and landed with a great impact behind the couple, the shockwave causing Johnny to stagger forward and smashing the other a good 10 feet away.
‘I believe I was being summoned-’ He looked down at the sprawled form of Johnny ‘by the name of the Morning Star.’ His mouth twitched in obvious annoyance, and with a flourish of a hand, Johnny was lifted off his feet and held hanging in the air. A second later he was hurled with great speed at the hotel wall, where he got smashed into the wall hard. Blood escaped from his lips, as his eyes widened in pain. He crumpled to the ground, and Myzrael turned to face the woman.
<***>
Veronica motioned after Johnny, but the angel Myzrael stood before her, practically towering over her.
She took a deep breath as she stepped backwards, keeping her eye on the angel.
It was time... Veronica nodded and pulled a handgun out of her purse. She continued her backwards steps as the gun shook between both her hands.
“Don't hurt him. Just go!”
<***>
Myzrael looked at the gun pointed at him. He laughed.
'You cannot hurt me with such crude weaponry' He said coldly, as a black tendril of dark energy extended from one of his hands and whipped the gun out of her hand.
'I will not have you interfere'. He closed his hands as if praying, and a giant globe of water surrounded Veronica and trapped her inside.
He turned to Johnny and started walking slowly towards him.
<***>
Johnny was hurting, man. Every bone, muscle and nerve throbbed with pain.
Watching Myzrael approach, Johnny was pretty damn sure that his time was up.
Johnny turned his head and found Veronica trapped in what he could only describe to himself as an “water prison”. Veronica looked like she saw screaming, but damn, he couldn't hear her. Suddenly, she started nodding down at the ground. Johnny dropped his sights and found a handgun before Veronica.
Johnny crawled as quickly as he could, picked the handgun, and covered it in his blazer.
<***>
Myzrael raised his hand, and Johnny was lifted from the ground.
'If only I was like the Morning Star, the most powerful, beautiful, and intelligent among my kind, I might show some mercy. I speak of course, before he was unfairly cast out of the pearly gates..'
He thrust his hand forward, and Johnny was crushed into the wall again with a sickening crunch. He drew his hand to him, and Johnny flew towards him, stopping inches away from his face. Myzrael looked into Johnny's eyes.
'There is no greater understanding than that found..' he closed his eyes. 'In the throes of pain'. He opened his eyes, and the crimson was there, it surrounded Johnny, as Myzrael gazed into Johnny's soul.
Suddenly, every cell in Johnny's body felt like it was on fire, every second an agonizing eternity of unending torment. Johnny could not comprehend anything, through the haze of pain wracking his body. He was on fire, then frozen, then electrocuted, then torn into pieces, then remade once more. The cycle of sensation repeating itself over and over, and his energy was waning, his sanity eroding, there was nothing that mattered, nothing that existed, nothing that could compare to this feeling of helplessness. He succumbed, he gave in, and he could take no more. The anguish was unendurable, he would have wished for death to have a respite, yet he was brought from the brink over and over, to be made to suffer again. A thousand years of pure unadulterated anguish was compressed into the mere five seconds he stared into Myzraels eyes, and even Myzrael didn't exist anymore, just the pain, and the pain, and the pain.
Myzrael flung him away from him, a rag-doll in the hands of a God. Johnny fell on the ground, not moving.
<***>
The air around Veronica slowly began to thin.
She couldn't scream.
Hitting the water did her nothing; girl couldn't even go through it.
Veronica held on the final breaths as Johnny crashed onto the concrete earth once more.
Veronica dropped to her knees as tears drew from her blue eyes.
That was it...
Veronica let herself go and collapsed.
<***>
The form of Johnny in such a helpless pose suddenly struck Myzrael. The crimson in his eyes did not recede. He was being mentally assaulted, once more. The memories, and the pain came rushing back to him.
Mastema and the fall from grace and the anger, and the massacre, and the light, and his unending fall into darkness, where nothing existed but the void in him, and the void surrounding him.
The exquisite pain he inflicted was only too familiar for the Dark Angel. He fell on his knees, and screamed as his wings disintegrated, and he was Vittorio once more. Vittorio the mortal, with the blond hair and violet eyes. He looked at his hands in shock and disbelief that he had transformed once more, at such an inopportune moment.
<***>
Johnny couldn't move. And even if he could, he wouldn't.
This isn't how its supposed to end.
Something has to give, damn it!
<***>
Vittorio gazed behind him at the unconscious woman. He was never introduced to her.. He suddenly was taken by his actions, and stood, making his way unsteadily to check on her.
<***>
Johnny pushed his head to find what was left of Myzrael approach Veronica's fallen body.
The bastard was gonna pay...
Agony echoed off Johnny's scream as he pulled Veronica's hand gun from his jacket and fired at Myzrael. His vision was hazy; his pain so intense he could barely keep his arm up.
He missed.
Damn it.
Myzrael turned Johnny's way.
Johnny couldn't believe it, he looked nothing like Myzrael. He looked like a boy no older than twenty. And unlike Myzrael, he actually looked like a divine being... An angel, with blond hair and violet eyes.
F*ck this!
The bastard has to pay...
Johnny cried in agony as he lifted his arm, aimed at Myzrael's head, pulled the trigger and fired again.
Johnny's arm gave up on him and jerked downwards as he fired and shot Myzrael on the shoulder.
Damn, he missed again.
<***>
Myzrael heard a shot, and turned to see Johnny with a gun pointed at him. He stared at him impassively, as another shot rung in the silence of the night. He felt a piercing pain in his shoulder, and he felt himself falling.
<***>
Johnny took one last look at him before closing his eyes and dropping head on the concrete and blacking out.
“Veronica,” Johnny thought. “If I could only bring myself to you...”
<***>
Vittorio's vision clouded, as he lay on the cool pavement. A lone tear fell down his cheek as he whispered something to the wind.
‘Myzrael what have you done now….’