Chapter 49: Joe Dark VI: A Planet in Shadows
With the Dark King now truly reborn in the body of Joe Dark, Alex is quick to realize how dangerous the scenario has now become. The young Overlord places his hand on the handle of his katana and prepares to draw it in order to defend himself. He awaits an attack from the ruler of darkness, but instead he is surprised to find that the Dark King is for some reason sniffing the air around him. "The air is thin...I detect a lack of suffering and fear on this planet..." He places his left out in front of his chest and points two fingers up into the air. "Peccatorum. Religiosus. VIM. EUISMOD. Sparsere planetam omnipotens...TOLLIT INFERNUM!" A pulsating, dark red ring with ancient runes on the inside of it slowly expands out from the Dark King's waist. Once the ring has grown wide enough in circumference, the ground beneath Alex's feet begins to shake uncontrollably.
"What is he doing?" The boy has a hard time hearing his own thoughts as the sound of booming thunder echoes in the distance. He turns his head to the left and notices a crimson lightning bolt quickly smite the ground near a town that lies over the horizon. "Oh no..." He says in a horrified tone of voice as he sees the dark clouds above him rapidly spread out to cover the skies. All across the planet, towns and landscapes start to become ravaged by lightning bolts that not only crash through the roofs of houses, but also set fire to the forests around the world. In the oceans the seas rage, wave after violent wave threatening to tear apart any sea-going vehicle along with their crews. Not even the lands that lie above these menacing clouds are safe from the forces of nature, as tornadoes rise out of the clouds and begin to suck in both the upper area of Sky Land and Nimbus Land into it's insurmountable spiral.
The frightened screams of the many citizens on the planet flow through the Dark King's ears, and by using his own dark magic he is able to make Alex hear those very screams echoing within his head. The sounds of the Toads, Goombas, Piantas, Koopas, and various other creatures only manages to make the young boy grit his teeth in anger at first. Then in the midst of the many voices crying out for a savior, he hears the pained whimpers of Princess Peach, and the tearful cries of Toadsworth begging for someone to come heal her. Alex, almost at the verge of tears at this point, quickly draws his katana and points it at the Dark King. "Withdraw your maelstrom of fear right now! This battle is between you and me!" The malevolent king lowers his head, and in response to the boy's defiant words his eyes glow a bright red color. In an instant Alex is forced onto his knees, his body being bound to the ground by a cage of crimson electricity.
"There is no battle to be had, seeing as victory was mine the moment I fully took over this boy's body." The Dark King takes his left hand and phases it right through the chest part of his armor. "Despite having his title, you are too inexperienced to have any hope of being a legitimate threat as an Elemental Overlord." The armored demon pulls his closed hand out and holds his arm out in front of his body. "I cannot take any risks though...The Star Spirits shall notice my emergence soon enough and may end up hindering my plans..." The Dark King opens his fist to reveal a pea-sized black glass orb in his palm. He begins to energize it with crimson electricity flowing out of his fingertips. "I will leave you with these last words, since you will not live to put them to good use. With your title comes a responsibility to the good people in the universe. With every battle that you fight, you are involving everyone around you in it...Whether you like it or not. After all, if there exists an evil force strong enough to defeat and kill you, then there is nothing stopping it from fulfilling it's desires..."
After enough energy has been put into it, the orb expands until it is half the size of it's wielders head, a hellish red glow surrounding it's body. The Dark King then flips his hand around so his fingers are pointed towards the sky. "And my desire, is to see your legacy end before my very eyes...Now, I'll let you take a moment to welcome the sweet embrace of death onto your heart, as you use your last breath to reminisce about days past..." Alex at first welcomes the idea of a peaceful recollection before death, but then he remembers his promise to the Overlord's spirit before he received his powers...And comes up with a somewhat risky gambit for dealing with the Dark King. "You hear that Joe Dark? After all of your hard work, someone else is going to kill me. Perhaps this wouldn't have happened if you weren't so weak!"
"Kahahaha..." The Dark King laughs. "You use your last words to mock the former owner of this body? I guess it's true what they say...That the first thing to go in the face of death is one's mind." Alex moves his fingers towards the yellow trigger on his katana, and gets a grin on his face that is hidden by the shadows cast by down by the demonic king's heavily armored body. "Now...DIE!" Before he can fire his attack off, a sharp pain thrusts itself upon the Dark King's brain, and the orb of darkness in his hand instantly vanishes. "What...What?" The malicious figure takes his hands and places them on both sides of his head, bending his body forward as a vein bulges out of his forehead. "So, you think you can just freely take over my body without any resistance?" The body speaks with Joe Dark's voice.
"Are you insane? Why are you trying to regain control? You want this insignificant boy dead, and I want to end the Overlord's legacy! If you let me keep control...Then I will-" "Use my body to bring about the end of the all life in the universe? Yeah, tough break there, you shadow of the past..." "Do you not get it? I am the only one who knows how to use the powers of this form to their full extent! If you take control, you will be significantly weaker! ARE YOU PURPOSELY TRYING TO FAIL AT YOUR GOAL?" "That's a risk I am willing to take...It may be impossible for you to understand, but your time has passed. You failed to kill the Overlord during your time in this mortal world, and now the only reason you are even allowed a second chance is because you had to possess the body of a child. How the mighty have fallen..." As the war of the two minds rages on, Alex is freed from his bindings. He pulls the trigger and changes to his Lightning Sniper form. He then stands up and aims his rifle at the Dark King's head.
"Though I may be a soul separated from my fleshy cage, it does not mean that I have become weak!" "Then prove it! If you are really as strong as you claim to be, then you should have no problem repelling the consciousness of a insignificant boy such as myself! HAHAHAHA!" "You still don't get it...You are no different from me! You kill without remorse, you've shown that to me today!" "I say you are the one who doesn't get it...My only targets are Whiter and anyone who is foolish enough to defend him! Once he is gone, then I will no longer have a need for these powers!" "You're insane..." "It makes sense for me to be that way...After all, I am your supposed successor..." The Dark King jerks his head back up and begins to scream in rage as he starts to lose the internal battle for control. Alex is able to locked on to the center of his forehead, and without any hesitation he pulls the trigger of his gun, firing a swift electric bullet that pierces right through the malicious king's skull, bursting right out the back of the head and forcing the Dark King's beastly spirit out of Joe Dark's body. The beast continues screaming until it melts into dark fog and is absorbed back into the body. Joe Dark lowers his head in a limp fashion, as Alex lowers the gun and lets out a sigh of relief.
"Whew...That was close..." Alex is about ready to deactivate his form and return to normal when he once again hears the terrified screams of the planet's population. "How can everyone still be in danger...Unless..." The young Overlord comes to a horrifying conclusion and promptly raises his head to look at Joe Dark's floating body with a feared look in his eyes. As the boy's malevolent aura flares back into existence, the fingers on his right hand twitch ever so slightly, and a moment later Joe Dark raises his head back up and begins to laugh maniacally. Alex is in disbelief over the fact that his mortal foe is still alive, and upon noticing that there is bullet wound in his head he begins to ponder to himself as to how this can be.
"Hahaha..." Joe Dark slowly lowers the volume of his laughter until he reaches the point of utter silence. "I will have to give that meddlesome tyrant some credit...He certainly knows how to make a perfect backdrop for this final battle of ours...Whiter." The moment that the armored figure utters his last name is the moment that Alex realizes that Joe Dark has resumed direct control over his body. "Yes...It gives you a sense of urgency, doesn't it? If you want to save them, and end this disaster summoned forth from the Gates of Hell itself..." Joe Dark raises his arm and points his sword at Whiter. "Then make me burn Whiter...Make me burn for my crimes! You wished to see my full power...So I hope you will not be foolish enough...TO HOLD BACK ON ME!"
Joe Dark quickly slashes the air with his blade, sending a wave of darkness rushing at his mortal foe. On his guard, Alex raises his rifle and fires a bullet that splits the attack in half and sends the bottom half crashing through the ground below his feet while the upper half scratches the top of his helmet. Joe Dark appears behind Whiter and raises his blade so the remainder of the dark energy gets absorbed into it, which creates a creepy, wavy purple glow while he raises his blade above his head. The scanners in Alex's armor detect the intense energy coming from the Dark King's armor, and in response to this he quickly turns his body around and pulls the red trigger to change into his Samurai form. He then clashes his katana with the Dark King's blade, and the shockwave of flames that emerges from the clash becomes as black as the night due it having now been dipped in the energies protruding from Joe Dark's aura. As he presses against Whiter's weapon, the boy can feel his katana cracking under the pressure of his overwhelming strength.
"Impressive Whiter...But I'm not too surprised. The fact that your reflexes would be as swift as the element you controlled in that form is a predictable ability at best...And a bore to me at worst..." Joe Dark can be seen grinning from ear to ear, a quiet chuckle escaping between the gaps of his teeth as he tries his hardest to hold back his excitement. Alex can't talk back, for his mind is almost completely focused on keeping his defense up. "Oh don't be quiet Whiter, I want to engrave your futile cries for help that will never come into my brain for all eternity, after all..." The young Overlord makes a quick glance towards the ground, which Joe Dark is quick to pick up on. He also finds it quite weird that Whiter seems to be getting bigger. At least, that's what appears to be happening, until the Dark King feels a strange, liquid material touching the nerves of his feet along with a hot air current rising up beneath him.
Joe Dark pulls his blade back and looks at the lower part of his body, only to see that he is slowly sinking into a pit of magma. After spending a few moments with an expression of surprise on his face, he manages to take a look at the heat waves emanating from Whiter's feet and chuckles lightly to himself once he puts two and two together. "Very clever Whiter. Since you couldn't attack with your hands or your weapon, you redirected the heat from your body to your feet in order to melt the floor below my own...And now the heat will turn my armor into liquid metal which will seer through my flesh until I am a hardened, black, skeleton that you can mount in the center of that ignorant Toad Town in order to glorify your victory, correct?" Before his arms are devoured by the magma, he raises them into the air, where he then commands the dark flames created by the clash of their weapons to form into the shape of a ghoul's bony right hand and grab onto his blade.
The hand drags him out of the magma pit, and as the heated rock drips off of his body Alex takes a few cautious steps backward upon noticing that almost all of the flesh on the lower half of Joe Dark's body has been melted away, leaving behind only the black, metallic bones that make up the lower part of his skeleton. This horrifying imagery does not stick around for long, as the metallic coat crumbles into blackened dust that scatters about in the air around the Dark King while the muscles on his legs slowly regenerate from absolute nothingness, followed soon after by a layer of flesh quickly growing to cover them. Before the skin covers it, fleshy juices emerge from the lower part of the legs and drip down into the magma below. When the skin returns, the black dust floats down and cover the legs, and in an instant the melted armor has re-appeared on his body, perfectly reconnecting itself to the rest of the armor on the upper part of his body.
"Sorry Whiter..." Joe Dark speaks with a hint of arrogance in his voice as he forces his sword free from the grip of the black flaming hand. He spins the blade around in a circular pattern beside his body before pointing the tip of it down at his arch nemesis' head. "But you won't be rid of me that easily..." The Dark King notices that Whiter's left hand is shaking uncontrollably, and is curious as to why that may be. "Has fear finally overtaken your mind?" He asks. "Fear?" Alex cocks a grin as a sweat drop drips down the right side of his face and he tightly clenches his left hand into the shape of a fist. "Why would I scared? This situation is what we both wanted..." The young Overlord takes his katana and points it up in the air at Joe Dark.
"I want to kill you while you are at your strongest, and you don't want me to hold back. Both of those conditions have been met...And quite frankly, the fact that you have regenerative powers doesn't worry me...In fact, I'm rather ecstatic about this battle. At least I'll learn how to take down these types of foes now instead of later..." Joe Dark takes a few moments to give Whiter a look of sheer disbelief, thinking his mortal foe had now lost his mind. The Dark King dispels his sword and begins to slowly clap his hands, all the while keeping that same, arrogant grin on his face. "I'm amazed that you can continue to look on the positive side of things, Whiter, but you are wrong in regards to one thing...I am currently using only a fraction of my full power."
Joe Dark appears before Alex with blade at the ready. Despite being surprised by the revelation of the malicious king's power, the young Overlord sets his katana on fire and quickly slashes at his foe's gut. The Joe Dark that stands before him turns out to be nothing more than a phantasm spawned from hell to mimic his appearance, and as the illusionary fiend vanishes in a veil of dark, hazy fog the real Dark King appears behind Whiter with his blade held near the side of his body and delivers a swift yet powerful diagonally cut to the back of his foe's armor, cutting through the metal as if it were paper and scarring the skin that rests beneath it. Alex lets out a teeth-gritted grunt while restraining himself from screaming in pain, then turns around to attack Joe Dark.
The Dark King's speed far outclasses his own in this form though, as demonstrated when in the span of the time it took for Alex to move himself, Joe Dark had already pierced his blade into the ground in order to cause fast-moving pillars of darkness to erupt from the ground and knock Whiter right off of his feet. While he spins around in the air, Alex pulls the grey trigger and changes into his Wind Reaper form just in time to turn his entire body into fog in order to avoid another cut from the Dark King's blade. Unimpressed by Whiter's trickery, Joe Dark cautiously leans his head around from left to right as he waits for him to stop acting like a coward and make another strike at him. After a few seconds of utter silence, Joe Dark feels a slight prick feeling on the skin of his neck, and following an irritated sigh Joe Dark raises his left hand and fires a black energy sphere with dark red flames burning around it out into the sky. That attack only travels a short distance before it explodes and sends ash clouds flying all around in the air.
The Dark King briefly sees Whiter's outline amidst one of the many ash clouds, only for the figure to disappear the moment that it sees that he has been spotted. Joe Dark feels another prick on his neck afterwards and responds to it with the same attack as before, only this time around he uses his right hand to fire the attack. This same pattern is repeated four more times, until the malicious king catches on to Whiter's tricks and tosses his blade out into the fog cloud, which impales itself right through his arch nemesis' right shoulder, causing his body to become visible once more. Joe Dark commands his blade to return to his hand and teleports over to Whiter in a brief flash of darkness. "You know Whiter, having regenerative powers means that any oxygen atoms you try to steal from my respiratory system will simply be replaced with new ones in the span of a second...A clever trick nonetheless."
"Who said I was planning on stopping you from breathing?" As Alex grasps his damaged shoulder with the opposite hand, his limp hand still managing to grasp onto the scythe. By telepathically communicating with the weapon, all of the oxygen gathered within it is unleashed at the same time in the form of a massive wind burst. Surprisingly, this works as an efficient enough of a distraction thanks to some of the millions of tiny wind blades within the blast cutting the Dark King's eyes, blinding him long enough for Alex to back flip away from him and pull the green trigger to change into his Jungle Whipper form. While in this state, Alex calls forth a long leaf covered in aloe vera so he can use it to cover his shoulder wound and ease the pain. Once the leaf is wrapped underneath his armpit and tied together via a small vine, Alex lets out a heavy sigh of relief while he changes into his Frozen Lancer form by pulling the appropriate trigger.
The young Overlord takes his lance and tosses it straight at Joe Dark once the blast of wind has died down. The weapon pierces through the chest region of the Dark King's armor, digging through the skin and reaching deep into the hollow void where his heart once existed. As his eyes regenerate, the subzero temperatures of the lance begin to cause permafrost to rapidly spread across the armor. By the time Joe Dark is able to react to this development, Alex has already called his weapon back into his hand and pulled the brown trigger to change into his Gaia Bruiser form. Alex charges at the now frozen Dark King, but right before he is about to slam him with a Magnitude 10 punch, the malicious king breaks the ice with the raw power of his aura alone. With a furious look in his eyes having now formed due to his patience running thin, Joe Dark grabs a hold of Whiter's fist and twists his arm with so much brute force put into it that when the bones holding everything together snap, it is both swift and excruciatingly painful for the victim in question.
Before the young Overlord can start screaming, the Dark King uses his otherworldly magic to seal his mouth shut with a magic barrier. He then dispels his sword and turns the hand that held it into a demonic, blood drenched claw before jamming it into Whiter's gut. When this happens, hundreds of long, sharp metal needles drenched in the blood and guts of many vicious beasts and demons of yore pierce themselves into multiple parts of Alex's body, with not a single one of them managing to touch his head. The world around them becomes distorted and fuzzy, a sign that Joe Dark is taking them to a new realm. Despite thinking that these needles are part of an illusion created by the Dark King, the unbearable amounts of pain being inflicted onto him by the second makes Alex realize that his line of thinking does not hold true. As he looks around him, he finds himself in a realm of pitch darkness, the only thing he can happen to notice in particular is the reddish outline of what looks to be a stalagmite. With his claw still stuck in his mortal foe's body, Joe Dark takes his other hand and wraps his fingers delicately around Whiter's chin and lifts his head up so they are now at eye level with each other.
"Whiter, let me tell you something right now...First off, I would like to give you some credit where credit is due, since from what I've seen in our battle here today you at least know some interesting uses for the many elemental powers in your possession. But that's just the thing...This just isn't your own strength." Joe Dark lowers his hand away from Whiter's face and skims the tips of his finger nails down the center of his chest. "This form, you did not come up with this yourself..." The Dark King grabs a hold of the hammer held tightly in his rival's right hand and yanks it out in a second, then presses the top of the weapon against the lower part of the young Overlord's chin to lift his face up high once more. "This weapon...It belongs to someone else." The arrogant king places the weapon back into Whiter's hand after making his point known, then goes back to holding his rival's face up high with his own hand. "You see Whiter, it doesn't matter how strong you become...It doesn't matter how many forms you take...In the end, you are nothing more than a puppet unable to use your own strength to accomplish your goals without submitting to the will of others..." Joe Dark removes his hand from the young Overlord's face and digs his fingers into the right side of his own. The young Overlord feels the realm around him becoming increasingly hotter, as he body begins to sweat by the bucket load. While he feels the moisture in his body vanish and his skin dry up, Alex weakly lifts his head up and notices the realm around him has become bright with the light of a hundred rising flames on the floor. "And all gods, even those omnipotent and omniscient..." The Dark King rips the flesh right off of his face, revealing beneath it a face of indescribable terror, the face of a creature beyond the comprehension of even the strongest of mortals, and the face of the unstoppable being who rules this fiery realm. "Shall eventually lose their wings...And fall into the sinful realm...Of Hell." Before Whiter can even blink, Joe Dark opens his face up wide to reveal hundreds of fanged, blood dripped teeth within him and thrusts his head out to devour his own mortal being with one, vicious bite.
Back in the plane of human existence, it turns out that all that Alex witnessed was indeed a nightmarish illusion created by the Dark King, but the effects of which were so realistic that the young Overlord's mind has been broken into microscopic pieces, leaving him with nothing more than a vacant, terrified look in his eyes. Now lacking the ability to properly concentrate, Whiter reverts back to his original appearance, and his flaming sword vanishes in a puff of fire. His lifeless body falls backwards and begins to plummet rapidly towards the ground. Joe Dark lowers his head to watch his rival land flat onto the roof of the temple, all the while his face grinning with joy. "Now...There is only one thing left to do..." Joe Dark floats down and back while holding his left arm out front of his body with the upper part raised into the air. His hand draws in fear from the world around him and converts it all into dark energy that surrounds his body in the form of a barely visible bubble. As the remainder of the energy is drawn into the palm of his hand and begins to be pressed together into the shape of an orb, Joe Dark looks down at the temple to see the many bodies that have fallen before his might. "I will achieve absolute victory here today...I will bring about the end of my hated enemy Whiter, and I will fulfill my purpose as the Dark King by destroying every last trace of the Overlord's legacy...If any of you down there still have even a hint of consciousness left within you, live your last moments in regret...For all of you, have failed..."
Next Time: From the Ashes
