XI

A Tale of Romance

~Luca~

Waking up is probably the worst thing that I could do right now. After I fell back asleep, I ended up having another nightmare about God and the entities talking about destroying the human race.

Honestly? Why did God want me to save everyone?

All I wanted to do was protect my family and friends, not the entire world. Hell, even the other worlds that I guess actually exist.

God, for some strange reason, seemed to think I would be able to get my power back from wherever it is and be able to use it well enough to save the entire human race.

No pressure right?

Regardless, I woke the girls up and got them into the truck before taking off, trying to push the thoughts of what God and the other things said.

"Mr. Luca? Is something wrong?" Penny asked from beside me. Since the truck had only 4 seats, plus the bed of the truck, Penny had to sit next to me while Aria and Haley-Rae are stuck in the back.

"Yeah, you seem really distracted." Aria asked quieter than usual.

"No. Nothing's wrong. I just had a bad dream." I told them before trying to drop the subject. "How did all of you sleep?"

Didn't work.

"What was your dream about?" Penny asked.

"Was it about... Emily?" Haley-Rae said, causing my blood to run cold.

"Where did you hear that name?" I said, looking at her in the rear-view mirror.

"Y-You talk in your sleep..." She whispered, dropping her gaze towards the floor.

"Who's Emily?" Aria and Penny asked.

I could feel my heart clench as I remembered the girl I loved with my entire being. My first kiss. The first one I went on an actual date with.

Unknowingly, I had started crying.

"What's wrong?! Why are you crying?!" Penny said, looking up at me with wide eyes.

"I-It's nothing..." I tried to dodge the question, but this only caused them to pester me further.

"We know something's wrong, Mr. Luca! You should tell us!" Aria exclaimed.

"Em...Emilia Brooks was... is a girl that I'm in love with. She...she and I had been dating for a few months before I ran away just before the crystals came to Earth. The night they came, I screamed at her as well as our friends that I was weak because I lost my powers. Then, I saw her again but had to leave because the government needed someone like me to train the soldiers on how to use the crystals better." My voice cracked as I tried to continue. "I...I thought that if I came back here, I would see Emily and my friends and family... that we could just go back to normal yet God seems to dictate otherwise."

I stopped as my throat constricted, causing me to lose the ability to speak clearly. For several long moments, there was nothing but silence as we drove further through Nevada.

"Sorry..." Penny said.

"Yeah, we're sorry for making you talk about that. We didn't know that it was something bad." Aria croaked out as if she'd been crying as well.

When I looked up at her, I noticed she had tear stains around her eyes.

It seems as though the Dog-Girl had cried with me.

Penny and Haley-Rae looked sad, but both weren't breaking down as much as Aria.

I just sighed before turning my attention towards the road.

I kept driving until it was late at night and Aria as well as Haley-Rae were asleep.

Penelope, for some reason, had been staring at my hand as if she wanted to grab it.

"Let's pull over here." I said, looking over to Penny and making an attempt at smiling. Sadly, this caused her eyes to widen before she looked away as if completely terrified. "Fine." I mumbled, looking at the two girls sleeping in the back.

I kept driving a few more feet before getting out of the car and preparing the trunk for each of my companions to sleep in.

After unfolding and placing down several blankets and pillows, I made sure the camper-shell was secured so they wouldn't get cold.

"Alright, you go ahead and get in bed. I'll grab these two and put them back here with you." I whispered to Penelope.

"W-What about you?" She said.

"I'll just sleep up front." I told her as I picked Haley-Rae up then put her underneath the covers.

"But, isn't it really hard up there?" Penny asked, to which I shrugged.

"Maybe, but at least I have the heater." I know I probably shouldn't have said that, but subconsciously my mouth has a tendency of making it seem like I'm a complete douche.

I quickly picked up Aria and placed her underneath the covers since it was starting to become really awkward to me.

"Mr. Luca?" Aria asked as she rubbed her eyes. "Did..." a yawn. "Did we stop?"

"Yeah, Ari. Go ahead and get some sleep. It's getting late and we have a long road ahead of us tomorrow." I said. Aria yawned once more before nodding her head.

"Okay. See you tomorrow Mr. Luca."

"See you tomorrow, kid."

I proceeded to leave the three girls in the back and hopped in the front seat.

"Why..." I asked myself aloud. "Why am I so weak? I lost my powers and now I can't stop myself from becoming an emotional mess."

The next morning, I woke up to the sounds of gunfire. Nothing like you'd hear in the movies, though.

This sounded as though I was in the middle of a war and part of me wondered if I'd see helicopters at any point in this fight.

"Mr. Luca!" I heard the girls scream. Without thinking, I jumped out of the truck and ran to the back where I found my three girls staring wide eyed at several people wielding crystals as some kind of armored exo-skeleton.

These wielders were against normal humans who were shooting at them with guns... normal, pre-apocolyptic guns.

I was fairly certain I could see one of them shooting at the largest of the armored people with a stub-nosed six-shooter.

"We're just looking for the masked man! There's no need to involve yourself in this!" An armored person said, pointing what I could only describe as a rocket launcher at the group of men and women. "If you let us take this man and his companions, we will leave you in peace. If not, then we will consider you all to be harboring the criminal and not show any of you mercy."

"WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?!" The man with the six-shooter asked. "What crimes did this man and his companions do?"

"We are a group of warriors who seek to better the world. As for what this man has done, he is being charged with crimes against destroying the entire world." Everyone was silent as he spoke.

I stared directly at him and could only widen my eyes in surprise.

I hadn't destroyed the world. I wasn't even planning on it. So... how was I being accused of such a thing?

Plus, God claims that I have to be the one to save this world as well as the others from some evil... Maybe those beings that I heard before...

"The world seems to be as fine as it usually is!" A woman exclaimed. "How could this man have already destroyed the world if we're still alive?!"

"I never said he already destroyed the world, Ma'am." Rocket launcher man said. "However, there is a 64% chance that he will in the future so we must act. If we do not kill him today, he will bring about the downfall of everything in creation."

Again, silence fell upon everyone.

"You said this feller has a 64% chance of destroyin' the world in the future?" An older man said, walking through the group of people. "That seems pretty ridiculous to me."

"Yeah!" Another person exclaimed. "How can you even claim to know what's going to happen in the future?! Especially a 67% chance of something happening?!"

"I said 64% chance of it happening. As to how we know, we were told by our King Kronos, Lord of Time."

My blood went cold as he spoke of the Titan Lord of Time.

It seemed as though not only God was real, but so were the Titans... This also meant the Greek and Roman gods were real as well. Maybe even every God ever conceived...

"Girls, we're leaving." I hissed, grabbing each of them and throwing them in the front of the truck with me.

I then pulled out of there as fast as I could, looking in the rear view mirror to see something that made my heart stop.

Everyone had been killed within a matter of seconds before the people who wanted to kill us started firing their weapons.

"HOLD ON!" I screamed, swerving the truck to the left just as a rocket exploded next to us, throwing the truck forward.

After the explosion, and being sent forward, I pulled on the hand break before turning the car around and reversing up the mountain we were next to.

With the trees being able to cover most of the truck, I kept going until we reached a clearing.

Switching the truck into drive, we turned around then started going down another side of the mountain.

"Please God, anyone, please let us get out of this alive." I mumbled under my breath as we continued driving. I took a peak behind us and breathed a sigh of relief since the armored group wasn't behind us.

"LOOK OUT!" Penny screamed before we crashed.

For several moments, I wasn't able to see anything. I could, however, hear the groans of the three Demi-humans beside me.

"Is everyone okay?" I asked, gradually regaining the ability to see.

"Yeah." They groaned.

As I looked in front of us, I found that we had hit one of the armored people who was now bent over the hood of the truck with blood trickling down his face.

"Y-You will pay for this..." He croaked out. "L-Lord Kronos promised us immortality in exchange for killing you. You who will destroy e-everything in anger. You who is named after the first Angel of the Abyss... A-Abaddon..."

With that, the man collapsed upon the hood presumably dead.

What he said did strike me as odd.

How was I named after something in the Bible?

But, there was a lot I didn't know about my family. That, and I had lived several lives before this... so maybe in one of these lives, my name was Abaddon or something relating to her.

"Girls, we need to get our stuff and go. The truck is broken." I said, ushering each of them out before going in front of the truck and grabbing the man's crystals.

It was odd, but the man was wearing all black crystals which meant he either took them from someone... or... they were given to him.

One thing I had figured out during my time at the research base was that there was some kind of hierarchy to these things.

The more frequent a color was (meaning the more there is of a specific color) the weaker it was. The crystals which were few were typically stronger.

Reds, Greens, Blues... they were all weak compared to Blacks, Whites and Grays.

Black, however, being the strongest.

I don't know exactly why this color was stronger than the others, but something, or someone, must have decided that this be the case.

"Mr. Luca... we...we're ready." Haley-Rae whispered. I turned to look at her, noticing that she was staring at the dead man on my hood then at me placing his crystals inside my duffle bag.

"Alright. I'm sorry you three had to witness that." I said. "This isn't something anyone should have to see, but this is evidently what the Fates have decided."

With that, we left.

We left the truck, our fastest mode of transportation.

We left the dead follower of Kronos.

We left whatever innocence they had back there.

Sadly, I knew the affect of seeing a dead body as a child. I knew they were going to have nightmares because of this and I couldn't save them from it.

After all, what could I do without my powers?

END