"Fuck..." I woke up, reeling from my headache.
For a second, I had to remind myself who I was & what I was doing there.
"I'm Jesse Essej, the Freedom Junkie. I..." As I mumbled to myself, I shot up in anger.
"Those two fuckers!" I remember how those 2 Chaotic Demons jumped me, I couldn't fight back!
One of them was a beautiful woman that could control portals, and the other one was some abnormally fat jaba the hutt lookalike.
"How did he even pull her... I must know his secrets."
For now, I decided to ignore them. Picking a fight with powerful Chaotic Demons was incredibly stupid, and from the looks of it, the woman alone was much stronger than me, not even mentioning the bulbous horizontally challenged man.
She could control portals. But they were... muvch better than my teleportation, but how?
I racked my brain.
My teleportation was almost instant, but she could conjure portals at an even faster rate than I could teleport, and move through them even quicker than me.
"That's it!" I soon came to a satisfactory conclusion.
Her portals... they could activate without her even consciously trying to summon them.
It was like they had a mind of their own. She didn't need to waste time consciously thinking about making the portals, they'd just appear when she most needed them.
To be honest, I've never seen a power that worked in that way, so I was a little stumped.
'Regardless, I need to kill Kyle, first."
The orb on my necklace shined with a luminous glow.
It burned so bright that it gave me a massive headache.
As I recalled what the conversation between the demon & I entailed, the headache slowly subsided.
He told me that each God has an orb, but this orb... It wasn't just an orb owned by a God. It was owned by THE god.
The God of this entire world!
And the orb, somehow, could do anything imaginable, from reviving the dead to changing the world.
The only problem was that a mere mortal like me couldn't control it. The thing just did what it wanted.
"This is unfortunate..." I whispered to myself. The orb was telepathically speaking to me.
"Kill the boy. Further the plot."
At first, it startled me. I jumped back, and wondered who was speaking.
The ringinhg sound of those 2 sentences kept giving me headaches, until it drove me mad.
Eventually, I pieced together that it was sentient, but I kept asking the one question in my head.
"How?"
It never spoke before? But now its talking? That made no sense!
"Kill the boy. Further the plot."
I screamed out towards the inanimate object in anger.
"It would be nice if you gave me a hint to where he was! You're just ringing in my ear, y'know!"
The orb, as if understanding my objections, told me: "Very well, I shall give you an upgrade. Use it well. And remember, kill the bo-"
Instantly interrupting it, I shouted out. "Yeah, yeah, I get it. Kill the boy, further the plot. Do you ever get sick of repeating that?"
As I said that, suddenly, I felt a strange change. In my mind, I could somehow see a place...
Imbedded into my mind.
"What? No way..."
At this point, somehow, the orb had given me the ability to see where people were.
Interested, I thought to a couple people.
First, was Luc.
I saw it very clearly now. He was working on some kind of... robot?
All of a sudden, out of my control, I instantly teleported to him.
I didn't mean to, so I assumed that the orb was the thing that teleported me there.
It was a very uncomfortable feeling to leap through space without actually having control of it.
"Whoa. Freedom Junkie? What the hell are you doing here?" Luc asked, genuinely shocked.
"Sorry!" I shouted out in fear. The last thing I wanted to do was talk to this guy.
Luc just stared at me, and told the guy working on the robot to bring it back.
"So what brings you here today?" He asker, seemingly curious.
Shoot! How do I get out of this conversation!
I really didn't want to talk to this guy. Last time we met, he said that he wanted me to kill some pirate lady, and I got completely sidetracked.
Plus, the guy creeped the hell outta me!
"Look, man, I get you wanna talk, but I have somewhere I need to be..." I tried leading the conversation to its end, but he stopped me.
"Nonsense, buddy. We were friends 8 years ago, remember."
Friends? We met each other once! What kinda friendship is that?
"Yeah, friends, totally..." I lied to his face. Besides, wasn't he the one who said our 'friendship' was purely transactional.
"Hey, look, it's really been nice meeting you, but honestly, I'd rather be brutally assaulted in a Denny's restaurant than ever talk to you again, so fuck you." I said, surprisingly calm.
I knew he was going to try to attack me, and on que, he pulled out a gun, and instantly tried shooting me.
His veins popped, and his entire face grew red with pure rage.
I anticipated it ahead of time, and instantly teleported far away from him.
"Okay. That went well." I snorted sarcastically after having jumped into a random place in the world.
Apparently, now, I could see an image in my mind of where I was going to teleport before teleporting there.
"I wonder... does it work with anyone?"
What about dead people?
I thought to a dead person, saying his name out loud.
"Josef... Carver!"
All of a sudden, the image I saw in my mind was completely black. Endless darkness.
And then, I felt my brain turn to mush, and I was back to where I was.
"All I can see is blackness... seems like dead people don't work."
I thought to myself. "Okay, what if I want to teleport to a person, but not be seen by that person, would that work?"
I tried to do that, and surprisingly, it worked.
I saw an image of Kyle, and then, in my mind, there were several images in my brain of a place away from Kyle.
Almost all of them were of a small island with what looked to be a naval base.
"Looks like he joined the army..."
At that point, I looked at the orb.
"Why do you want me to kill him? And if you can do literally anything, why make me specifically do it. Why can't you kill him?"
In response, the orb telepathically spoke.
"Kill the boy. Further the plot."
Damn it! That's NOT an explanation!
I felt like I was being used, and just couldn't bring myself to listen to the piece of junk.
I tried breaking it, but shocker!
It was unbreakable.
I tried cutting it, stomping it, crushing it. Nothing worked, and the thing kept ringing in my ears.
"Kill the boy. Further the plot."
The sheer repetitiveness of that sentence annoyed me far more than the ringing in my head that would come after hearing it.
This thing wouldn't stop giving me a migraine, and I couldn't stand it.
"Fine! I'll do it! Just... STOP! You're hurting my head."
At that moment, another thought crossed my mind. It could do literally anything, right? Maybe it could help me achieve my perfect world?
It seemed to have read my mind, because in response, it began to talk to me.
"Just kill the boy, and I will help you achieve your goals."
In response, I smiled. "Okay. I get it. But first, I want to check out this new power-up I got."
Before, I could just teleport to places I could see with the naked eye. That, and I could also teleport to places that I'd already been & seen all across the world. But now, with this new power, I could teleport to places I'd never been before.
I tried to use my newfound powers, but quickly realized that it was pointless. I could only teleport to people that I personally knew, and on top of that, I could only see images where people I personally knew were, or places that were close to them, yet out of their view.
The stupid orb only gave me just enough of an upgrade to locate Kyle - I wasn't able to just teleport wherever I wanted. The same old rules still applied.
At that point in time, the thought crossed my mind. Should I really listen to this orb? Clearly, it wants something. But I can't defy it. Not now, that it has that much power.
I've been given contrasting information, as the demon said that it was able to do everything, even rewriting reality.
Yet, since it needs me specifically to kill Kyle, then its definitely not capable of anything. I have too little information.
Either way, killing Kyle seemed to be the next natural step in my journey, and the headaches were getting worse, so I had no choice but to listen to that stupid thing.
I teleported after one of the images of the island came to my mind.
Looking around, I was shocked at how accurate it was. The beautiful blue ocean, surrounding by a lush green island.
The sight was out of a fairy tale. Even the weather seemed perfect. I couldn't believe it!
As I looked up, I saw the fortress.
"Hey, I don't know who's in this military base. Can you give me a disguise? I would prefer not to look like myself in all this." I told the orb.
I thought the orb was just going to ignore me, and continue saying that annoying phrase, but suprisingly, it listened.
All of a sudden, I transformed. Everything changed, as I not only lost height, but my stature, build, and look were all different.
"Whoa. I look completely different! Why do I look like a kid, asshole! Give me someone else to look like!"
In response, the orb shined.
"I turned you into a good childhood friend of mine. Now, kill the boy, and fur-"
I instantly stopped the orb right there.
"Childhood friend? You're an inanimate object. Shut the fuck up!"
I wasn't in the mood for the kind of unbelievable bullshit that the orb was spouting.
It was so braindead obvious that it was pretending to be a real person to get me to cooperate, especially after giving 1 instruction to me this whole time.
As I looked around, I enjoyed the beautiful view. It was very calm, and peaceful, and it reminded me of when I was a kid, before everything went bad.
I was standing on the rocks, listening to the cobalt blue rushing waves - A cacophony of sounds rushing through my ears.
The sound of the birds -Seagulls- in the distance really made me think of my childhood, and the serene landscape, folding from beneath me.
I almost tripped on the jagged rocks, but quickly held my balance, and breathed in the nice, cool and crisp air.
It was not only a nice sight, but it was a nice day outside.
As the milky white clouds peeked from over the sun, I saw many people in the distance, using Jet-Ski's, fishing & even more divers.
In total, it looked like a tropical paradise.
Unfortunately, the giant dark fortress loomed in the background, souring the beautiful sight in front of me.
As I looked up at it, I smiled to myself.
"Get ready, Kyle. I'm coming!"
-Meanwhile, on the islands-
A boy, by the name of Bart, was sitting down. On his face, laid a dirty smile. "That jackass, Arthur. He scammed me, he'll pay for that."
Bart pulled out a small rusty pocket knife. He flipped it up.
"Arthur Leo. I'll kill him."
From the very moment he was born, he was a psychopath, and now, he finally couldn't resist his urges.
He had to kill!