Rebirth in the Apocalypse: Third Time's a Charm



Getting more and more confused the longer I tried to analyze my feelings, I eventually gave up and went back to what I was doing before. Seeing the effects of the flames on his skin, I started to wonder what my ice would do to him.

My poor, neglected ice power that I more often than not forgot that I had. I would have to make a conscious effort to use it more often so it wouldn't disappear into the background, never to be seen again.

Calling the ice, I pictured the man's shoes freezing to the ground with solid chunks of ice raising up to about mid-calf preventing him from being able to move his feet and legs. The ice, slowly at first, obeyed my commands and I saw the moment that the imprisoned man understood what was going on.

He started by trying to lean forward to see his feet and the ice so cold that it burned just like my flames. Then, when that didn't work because of how he was tied to the chair, I watched as he tried to pick up one leg at a time.  When that didn't work either, he looked at me in horror. "What type of monster are you?" he asked. I heard Chen Zi Han growling behind me and I put a hand out to stop him.

"Monster?" I asked, making a show of looking around the room, my eyes landing on the cages with the girls in them. "I don't think that I am the monster in the room," I said before I stopped myself. I wasn't planning on saving the girls in the cages. Maybe, at most, I would unlock them, but I wasn't going to bring them back home with me and look after them. Did that make me the monster too?

I tilted my head to the side and smiled at the man as his lips started to take on a tint of blue.  His face was getting paler and paler as I allowed my ice to continue up his legs to his torso and finally his arms. Chuckling at the expression on his face, I couldn't help myself. "But maybe you are right. Maybe I am the biggest monster in this room of monsters. And that, my friend, makes you screwed."

He took a deep gulp of air into his lungs as the ice made its way up his chin and over his mouth. The last thing I saw was the look of panic from his one remaining eye as my powers completely consumed him.  I flicked him in the forehead and watched as the man's body completely shattered into a hundred ice-covered pieces.

I wasn't satisfied with the results, but at the same time, I wasn't dissatisfied. I had made him scared, taken away his power as the big bad wolf, and showed him that a Little Red Riding Hood could slay the monster just as easily as the hunter could. So in that way, I mentally tortured him.

'Needs more blood,' came an ice-cold voice from deep inside of me. Great, might as well add one more personality to the mess that was already in my head. 'Blood is messy,' I pointed out. 'And I'm not dressed for messy.' Not to mention blood was an absolute bitch to get out.

'More blood,' the voice repeated, as cold as the winter winds blowing through the plains.

I ignored the new voice and walked over to the next man. "Hi," I said to him as I crouched down so that I was at eye level with him. Now it was his turn to whimper. "I don't… don't know anything," he stuttered, refusing to look into my eyes.

"Well, that shouldn't be a problem," I replied with a smile. "Because there is nothing that I want to know." All of a sudden, he looked at me with hope in his eyes.

"Does that mean you will let me go?" he half asked, half begged. The puppy dog expression on his face made me want to pinch his cheeks, but I held back, not actually wanting to touch this man. "No," I said simply. Why should I let him go? I needed a body to get stronger and I was not going to use any of the men around me for that purpose. Besides, couldn't this be considered as a type of fate that he fell into my lap at this time?

"Now, on a scale of 1-10, what is the pain level that you are currently experiencing?" I asked, tilting my head and studying him. He seemed to have the least amount of bruises and cuts on his body so he shouldn't be in too much pain.

"8!" he yelled. I hadn't even had the chance to do anything to him yet and he was already yelling an 8? This man had no pain tolerance at all.

"Well, that is disappointing," I grumbled. "I needed a baseline in order to figure out what was more painful, but how can I do that if you are already claiming that you are already in that much pain? Do you have some serious injury that I can't see? Is it just that you don't have the ability to handle any type of pain?"

He whimpered again, not sure what to do or say, but I wasn't in the mood to deal with him anymore. Setting him on fire with the pink flame, I took out my cell phone to time how long it took him to burn to death. I had once heard that burning to death was one of the most painful ways to die and I wanted to know for sure if that was right.

"10!!!! 10!!!!" came the screams, as his feet started to be kissed by my flame. I ignored the screams and went over to the third guy.

"I am sure that you already have some idea what is going to happen to you. May I ask if you choose death by fire or by ice?" I asked the man. He, like the second one, didn't seem to have that many injuries on him, but I was starting to tire out fast. My pink flame seemed to take out the most amount of power in me.

"Ground Force Army Special Forces Lt. Yu Xue Yang of Team D," said the man as he sat there, staring into my eyes.

"Well fuck," I grumbled, not at all happy with this plot twist.  "Wang Chao!" I yelled, not bothering to break the staring contest between the two of us. "Can I borrow you for a sec?"

I didn't hear him coming down the stairs, but in less than two minutes he was beside me. "Yes?" he asked, not bothering to look at the man in front of him. I waved my hand to get him to repeat himself, but as soon as he looked over at Wang Chao, his eyes widened in disbelief.  "General," he breathed. The expression on his face was that he was looking at his savior.

Fuck my life. Not another one.

"Who are you?" demanded Wang Chao looking at the man. But I interrupted their conversation before it could even start.  "Who's upstairs?" I asked, my eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"Liu Wei," he assured me over top of the screams of the second man that was burning to death beside us.  I nodded my head, content that Liu Wei was still guarding our exit. I would have to make a note not to burn anyone else to death in a confined space like this basement. The smell was not pleasant at all.

I walked over to the fourth member of the crew that was just waking up. "Morning!" I said in a bright, cheerful voice. I was having to push myself, my powers weakening the longer this went on. I might have to turn to old-fashioned torture techniques if this was going to be the result of constantly using my power.

The fourth man jerked his head up and looked at me. Licking his lips and he looked me up and down, I began to realize that he was probably not aware of what was going on around him.  "Are you military or police?" I asked with a huff.  When he shook his head, I took out my gun and shot him in the forehead right between the eyes.

Starting to be too tired to care about continuing, I turned off my timer after only 5 minutes, not willing to deal with the screams and pleading that was going on with the second guy. Calling on my purple flame, I flicked my wrist and let the stronger flame burn him to death within seconds. The basement was finally silent, so I turned my back on the girls still locked up and started up the stairs, my feet dragging.

None of the men stopped me, and even Liu Wei simply guided me to a couch in the living room and cuddled with me, leaving the men in the basement to their own fate. But then again, I guess that if there was someone else in this house, they would have been found by now.

Resting my head in his lap, I closed my eyes as I felt him playing with my hair.  "You won't leave me behind, right?" he asked softly, vulnerably.

I scoffed at that thought. "I will never leave you, so don't even think about leaving me," I assured him before I succumbed to the need to sleep and recover. I felt his kiss and then there was blissful nothingness.