Leesville had changed since Mickey was last there. It was barely recognizable. Almost every building in town had a little plaque on the front that said “This is where Emperor Augustus used to eat hamburgers.” “This is where Emperor Augustus used to do his laundry.” “Emperor Augustus took a piss on this wall on June 17th, 2022…”

  There was clearly no sort of fact-checking going on either. He didn’t see a single one that was accurate. He and Gus never ate burgers at that shitty restaurant, he had never once seen Gus do laundry anywhere, and it was Mickey that had pissed on that wall on June 17th, 2022, not Gus. Mickey’s legacy, all of his contributions to this half of the country, just given to Gus like he did all of the work.

  They did it all together; they were a great team. Together, they cut through anyone who was stupid enough to fuck with them, eliminated every other super-powered asshole on the planet, toppled governments, became gods among men — and Gus still wanted to kill him.

  He came across a bridge. It looked like any other bridge in America — just a dull slab of gray asphalt with dull slabs of gray concrete on either side for people to walk on, and even more slabs of dull gray jutting upwards to act as safety rails. Mickey remembered the bridge fondly. There was a space tucked away under the bridge, perfectly flat and running parallel to a babbling brown brook, that he used to call home. It did a good job of keeping the rain and sun off of his head, and nobody ever thought to venture anywhere near the spot unless they were told about it. He, Gus, and Beth — who was Gus’s girl before their lives changed forever — spent three good years under that bridge, hiding away from the world.

  Now the entire world seemed to be gathered under the bridge. People swarmed and pushed into each other so that they formed a single solid mass. They looked like a beehive that had been cut in half, all buzzing to see where it all started for their Emperor. Mickey looked at them from above with disgust. He thought about slaughtering them all for a moment, but settled for hurling down a couple of spit wads at them instead. One splattered directly on the back of a young man’s neck, but when he looked up to see who assaulted them, Mickey was already miles away.

  He hadn’t come back to Leesville to take any strolls down memory lane. Seeing the bridge just confirmed that it wasn’t going to give him any answers. He needed information. He needed to see the church.

  On the outside, it didn’t look too different from a standard issue American church. It was made entirely of brick, with a stained glass window, a pointed roof, and a little cross at the top. It was isolated deep in the woods, at least a ten minute drive down a dirt road, but that wasn’t too out of the ordinary around these parts.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  That’s why Mickey never suspected what it contained when he snuck in through the back door all those years ago.

  He thought it was communion wine in a fancy bottle, and he wanted to get drunk, so he nabbed it. But when he, Gus, and Beth drank it, they were changed. Black marks grew on their bodies, their skin itched from the inside, and they were imbued with strange powers. Gus could secrete slime from his body. Mickey could feel the vibrations inside of people and attune himself to them, resonate with them until it was too much for their bodies to handle.

  At first, he could grab people and put their body parts to sleep. That was it. But the marks on his body —patterns of jagged black lines — fed off of death. Now, after killing more people than he could remember, he felt the vibrations in everything. He resonated with the air and moved through it like wind. He resonated with the ground and it would tell him what was happening on top of it, anywhere in the world. He resonated with people and they burst into bits and chunks.

  He loved it, and he was never afraid to admit it, unlike his spineless friend. Gus always acted like it was a burden. Somehow, the man managed to make being a goddamn superhero seem like a bad thing.

  If he really hated it so much, he could just fucking kill himself, Mickey reckoned — probably. Mickey hadn’t ever tried, but he was reasonably sure that he could die if properly persuaded, and so could Gus.

  He went into the church through the back door, just like last time, even though he knew nobody would be there. All of the members of this church died decades ago. Still, his gut was telling him that something was there for him. His dreams told him that this was where he needed to be.

  But there was nothing in the church except for rotting benches and a dusty stage where the Reverend used to speak. The Reverend drank too much of his own fucked up communion wine, and had more black marks on his skin than anyone, and the power to move the earth around and conjure armies from the ground. But Mickey and Gus kicked his ass and did what he wished he could do — rule the country as living gods.

  Mickey held up his hand and a bench exploded into moldy splinters. It felt good to destroy something. He hadn’t killed anyone in a while and he was starting to get itchy. The fact that he’d come all this way and came up with jack shit made him even itchier.

  The next person to come across him was an unlucky motherfucker.

  He destroyed another bench, and then another until pieces of wood covered the entire floor and the air was thick with dust. He stepped outside, lifted up his hand, and sent the entire building crumbling down. Bricks flew and hit the surrounding trees. Shards of stained glass stuck into his leg and he pulled them out. Once it was nothing more than a pile of rubble, Mickey turned around to leave and never come back to this shitty town.

  But when he looked into the woods, he saw a large cat staring right at him with big, yellow eyes.