Shattering Humanity-Chapter 274: "Everyone Wants To Be Special..."
"There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.
Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺
The poison of vipers is on their lips.
Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.
There is no fear of God before their eyes." -Romans 3:11-18
______________________
[Mount Decima Military Residential District]
Nephilim: "When I get back Eden, maybe I can take you shopping.
I know how much the office supply store tickles your fancy, haha!"
Eden blushes.
Nephilim: "I’ll be back, you two be good for Silpheed!"
The man fully embracing the role of a single father of five, closes the door behind him.
At the table Arai finishes his meal and walks away leaving his emptied plate, without a word. The blonde exits the dining room and can be heard walking up the stairs.
A frowning Maniae watches his friend leave the dining table. He then gets up, bringing his and the other young man’s dirty dishes to the sink. Silpheed moves and takes a step to the side so the chivalrous Maniae can place the ceramic plates under the water.
Silpheed(nods): "Fhng- ouu- Mhhniayy-.
Oummf- Ai’m- dnn- heear-, whh- knn- zdrrd- orr- dreyyniin- ivv- ouu- wahnn-."
The enthusiastic ’younger brother’ blushes and smiles wide.
Maniae: "Really?! You mean it?!"
Silpheed returns to the dishes with a nod to his question.
The over excited Maniae slips on the hardwood while wearing socks. The loud *THUMP!* startles and makes Eden jump out her own seat with a yip.
He quickly recovers, and doesn’t skip a beat to get upstairs.
Persephone smiles, watching him run out in a hurry, and then writes something down on her note pad.
A shaking Eden slowly gets back up, rubbing her backside in slight pain. She looks across the table at her ’foster sister’ writing something down.
Persephone: "Oh, dang it."
The author flips her pencil around, erasing a mistake, and goes back to her writing.
Eden: "Uh- um...P-Persephone..."
The bright pink eyes of Persephone look up from her notepad and smiles at the shaking Treasurer.
Persephone: "Hm?
Is something the matter Eden?"
The extremely timid young girl shakes her head and goes to the counter. She lifts a magazine and grabs something. Hiding the surprise behind her back as she returns to the table, Eden looks away while half smiling.
Eden: "Um, I-I found s-s-something th-the other day, th-that you- you might buh- be able to use."
I, um, I cleaned, refurbished it and re-reset it."
From behind her back the nervous Eden reveals a computer tablet. There are a few scratches on the screen but other than that it is shiny and clean.
Persephone’s eyes grow wide. She looks back and forth between the tablet and the gifter, then takes it carefully from the ever trembling, but caring Eden.
Eden: "I r-remember you saying it ta-takes a lot of time to- to rewrite paragraphs when you re-re-realize they should be rearranged or saved for later ch-Chapters."
Persephone: "Eden..."
Eden: "And I-I have a printer at-at work, so once you’re d-done with the ch-Chapters-"
Persephone glides around the table and embraces Eden, while also cutting her off.
Persephone: "Thank you Eden.
You really are like a sister to me."
Silpheed turns off the water and turns around while drying their hands.
Meanwhile, Maniae rushes his way to the second floor of the comforting home, to his and Arai’s shared bedroom.
He opens the door to a dark room and Arai is back in bed, sleeping.
Maniae: "Arai, we’re supposed to get up.
Mr. Nephilim-."
Arai: "That Old Fart isn’t here anymore.
I’m going back to sleep like how I want.
Don’t you have somewhere to be?..."
Maniae has a disgruntled look on him, but doesn’t press his friend any longer and gets dressed in some training appropriate attire.
He opens the door and looks back in the room at his best friend.
Maniae: "See ya later, Arai..."
There is no answer before he closes the door.
[Outer Sanpaku, Demon District]
Zeke’s body gets hit with a direct hit by Shelly’s relentless physical force, but he doesn’t go anywhere, catching Shelly off guard.
She isn’t able to swing her kick fully through and Zeke catches her right ankle with perfect Taekwondo precision between his arm and ribs.
Zeke: "Hehe, because of this new energy surrounding my body, now I can’t even feel your connections landing."
Shelly prevents herself from falling with the other leg, but the taller, trained MMA fighter knowing taekwondo, brings her captured leg above her waist in an attempt to drive her to the ground.
HOWEVER, the prey immediately becomes the hunter once the indomitable woman uses her caught right foot to hook Zeke’s back and pulls him towards her left rising knee, directly landing under his chin.
HOWEVER, once again, the kinetic energy from the booming blow impacted to the unbreakable man, travels directly to Zeke’s symbiote and he smiles.
Zeke: "You can have all this back, Tomboy!"
He releases the pulsing wave of Seiõr and visible kinetic energy from his symbiote and Shelly attempts to cut it down, but her SanguineSoulSeiõrShield covered blade bounces of the projectile Seiõr wave and hits Shelly with the combined strength of all her attacks stored in his eye.
The force sends her crashing through the cement ceiling of the underwater tunnel’s dry entrance, into Outer Sanpaku.
Shelly(thinking): *Dammit!
How the Hell am I supposed to beat this guy?!*
Madame Fryer slides out of her sheath while Shelly recovers, flipping her body mid-air to be caught.
The sentient sword prevents her wielder from flying into a tall building outside the tunnel.
Shelly: "Chang youu, Madjum Vryer!"
Shelly(thinking): *There has got to be some sort of way to beat his ability...maybe...*
The battle tested young woman stands on her sword while floating above the entrance.
Zeke, covered in his pitiful aura, appears from out of the freeway tunnel and looks up in shock to see Shelly is more than okay from being launched and is looking down up on him.
Zeke: "So, that sword wasn’t for decoration after all, huh?
And you kept it a secret until need be."
Shelly doesn’t answer him while Madame Fryer is descending so they can return to her fight.
Zeke: "Some people just get all the luck.
Those of us who want to be special have to work hard, and still never end up seeing success.
While people like you..."
Shelly, covered in her special pink and gold SanguineSoulSeiõrShield, lands both feet on the asphalt, outside the freeway tunnel and Madame Fryer floats beside her.
Clearly not knowing anything about her life, Zeke continues while Shelly stands there with the grip of her blade in her teeth.
Zeke: "...While people like you get to coast through life, and receive every gift possible to aid you in your success.
Why is that so you think?
What makes you so special that you get to believe life is precious and worthwhile?"
Shelly removes the Seax from her mouth but doesn’t break eye contact with her opponent.
Shelly: "’Everyone wants to be special.
Not everyone wants to put the work in’."
That’s all she needed to say.
After the simple quote, she bites back down grip and squares up with her opponent.
The ’Titan of Beasts’ gets angry and with his half charged SunSword, covered in the pitiful SoulSeiõr, he charges for Shelly.
The two continue their battle between the abandoned cars outside the tunnel’s entrance.
Zeke: "How dare you think..."
Zeke whiffs a downward slash and Shelly side dodges it.
Zeke: "Jeremiah and I..."
He horizontal slashes only the air while Shelly does a split out of danger and quick jabs him in the gut.
Zeke: "...We HAVE worked hard!!"
Shelly swings one of her legs around to begin her momentum into a spinning motion on her back.
Kicking back upwards she dodges another attempt to chop her up and vaults cleanly over her opponent, with a jabbing rabbit punch to the back of his head on the way down.
She throws two more quick punches to the back of Zeke’s head, jumping backwards before he swings around with his sword.
Shelly is now playing and toying with her food.
Her Mach 2 speed is too much for the entry level SeiõrShield user to keep up and she continues to land various jabs to his body.
After two minutes of continuous abuse, Shelly stops, stands on top of a car, and looks as Zeke is out of breath from swinging his sword so much.
Zeke: "Hehe, you sure... hit me quite a bit.."
Shelly once again takes out the Seax and says one thing...
Shelly: "I am going to finish this with the next punch, so you better hope your eye ability can save you this time."
She returns her weapon back in the appropriate position, the after image out of plain sight, and Shelly appears right in front of Zeke.
In slow motion his symbiote releases the wave of collected kinetic energy, received from the attacker.
HOWEVER, this time Shelly is able to push through the wave and lands a direct Mach 2 speed haymaker to the temple of Zeke, sending him flying.
This time, the damage is sent right through Zeke’s own body as the punch turns his brown human eye all white and his IceEye goes haywire in every direction. Before losing consciousness, he mutters out...
Zeke: "H-How?...
Jeremiah...."
His unconscious body lands on the hood of a car and Shelly lands with both feet on the ground.
[Winner By Knockout: Shelly]
